Nature's revenge: Russian village swallowed by sand

If you destroy or over-exploit nature, nature has a habit of taking revenge. That is what happening in Shoyna, a Russian fishing village on the frigid shores of the White Sea.

If you destroy all vegetation, the soil cannot retain water and the result is flooding and dust storms. But what happens when you destroy the entire ecosystem of a sea? Overfishing of the White Sea not only depleted local stocks, it also ruined the area’s ecosystem. Trawlers scraped the sea floor clean of silt and seaweed. And with nothing to hold the sand in place anymore, waves started washing it ashore. The wind carries the sand from the shore further inland.

This disruption of the seabed is to blame for the invasion of sand sand, said Sergey Uvarov, the marine biodiversity project coordinator for the World Wildlife Fund in Russia. But no formal environmental studies of the remote region have been conducted.

Fifty years ago, the now desert-like area was filled with grassy meadows where cows would be taken to pasture, and villagers had their own little farms next to their homes. Shoyna was once a thriving fishing port, with old Soviet newsreels telling stories of the fishermen here heroically exceeding their production targets.

As has always been the case in Russia, production was (and is) the only thing that matters. Neither government nor public was interested in the environment. Even now in Shoyna, people simply adapt and shrug.

During its heyday as a fishing port, Shoyna’s quay could barely fit the more than 70 fishing vessels coming in and out every day. At its height, the village’s population was over 800; today it’s home to just 285 people.

Small-scale fishing still happens throughout the year, in the summer for food and in the winter for trade. It’s quite a way to the nearest market, however. Fish has to be hauled along a frozen river on snowmobiles for eight to 10 hours to the nearest town, Mezen.

There are some signs that Shoyna’s ecosystem may be recuperating. Grass started reappearing in Shoyna in the last five years. Fishermen, too, tell tales of seaweed tangling in their nets where there was none before.

But for now, the sand continues to come.