Talk:Soay, Inner Hebrides

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Soay Sheep[edit]

Am surprised to read nothing about the famous primative Soay sheep which erradicate bracken and now populate St Kilda. Is anyone able to write knowledgeably about these sheep - I'm not qualified? Mail4stu (talk) 13:12, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is the wrong Soay for the sheep ;) They have their own page at Soay sheep and are mentioned on the other Soay page Soay, St Kilda and St Kilda, Scotland of course. Akerbeltz (talk) 13:32, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

UTC)

Basking Shark Numbers[edit]

The claim that Maxwell's activities caused a serious drop in basking shark numbers, though supported with a citation, is ridiculous. Even a cursory read of Harpoon At A Venture confirms that his basking shark operations were neither the only ones in the area, nor the most successful in terms of numbers caught. What set his endeavour apart was not the hunting of the sharks, but the attempt to process the entire shark. As the company was relatively unsuccessful and short-lived, and was active in an area already being fished for basking shark by others, I would be extremely surprised if evidence can be found to show that Maxwell's activities in particular have caused lasting damage to the basking shark population around the Isle of Skye. Poglad (talk) 10:20, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yep I decided to look this up, since it did seem a bit much to blame Maxwell for "a serious drop in the numbers of these animals in the surrounding seas". I found a book (The Basking Shark in Scotland, 1998, page 102) which says that the "Soay company" caught 166 sharks in 1947 and 42 sharks in 1948. Another book (Advances In Marine Biology 56, 2009, page 295) says that in total 105,000 basking sharks were captured by fishermen in the north-east Atlantic between 1946 and 1996. Pasicles (talk) 00:41, 17 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know a great deal about them, but what kind of range do these creatures have? Do they stay in a small area, or travel great distances like large whales?

(As a matter of interest, I used to know someone from Soay, who had worked with Gavin Maxwell on this. He was seen as a crank by locals, rightly or wrongly.)-MacRùsgail (talk) 20:48, 17 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't claim to be an expert either, but I've had a further read-up on this. Basking shark movements aren't fully understood, but they are migratory, and they range about the temperate latitudes of the North Atlantic, following the plankton, which makes their movements unpredictable. Adult sharks do often to return same coastal region in consecutive years - so Maxwell's activities could, I suppose, have caused some localised harm, but I still can't find any evidence for it. Basking shark numbers have seriously dropped, and they are now a protected species, but there is no clear answer as to the cause of the decline, although the last half-a-century of fishing in the Atlantic can't have helped. (In the 1950s the Canadian government even had a "basking shark eradication program" albeit on the Pacific coast).

The book I mentioned (The Basking Shark in Scotland, 1998) has quite a lot to say on the Soay operation. It describes Maxwell as "extraordinarily gifted, versatile, and visionary", but "decidedly not a businessman". It describes the Soay venture as pretty much doomed from the start, because Soay was totally unsuited for even a small industrial enterprise, and his workforce "were often disaffected". Pasicles (talk)

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