Project Eisirean.

BBC News presents a nice confluence of language, history, and biology in Lost oyster beds rediscovered thanks to Gaelic and Scots language:

Long lost oyster beds on the West Coast of Scotland have been rediscovered thanks to Gaelic and Scots language. Scientists searched for the inclusion of the Gaelic words for oyster or oysters – eisir, eisirein and eisirean – and oyster habitats like sandy banks or tidal causeways in place names around Scotland’s coast.

They then found an oyster bed that had not been previously documented, as well as confirming oysters could have been present at other sites on Mull and Islay. Native oysters were once abundant in coastal European waters, including Scotland, but now only remnant populations are known to remain due to overharvesting and disease. Ecology and wildlife experts hope to use the discoveries to help rebuild oyster populations in suitable coastal locations.

The recent findings marked the culmination of several years worth of hard work, titled Project Eisirean. It is a collaboration between ecology and environment researchers, Gaelic and education experts at the University of Glasgow and local community organisations on the west coast of Scotland.

Dr Anna McGregor, an expert in coastal ecology and a lecturer at the University of Glasgow , had the original idea of locating oysters through traditional place-names, then applying scientific techniques to confirm oyster presence within them.

She explained: “This is a really exciting outcome, for a project that started off looking for the historic distribution of oysters along the West Coast. We thought that as native oysters are now really rare throughout Europe, is there a way to look where they used to be, using people’s memory and understanding – that can come through place names. We found two areas with oyster in the name, both on Mull, and after about two years we found another one on Lewis. Then we broadened the search to look for habitat related names, like sand banks.”

You will note that the piece is not well written (later on they quote McGregor as saying “What we are hopping is…”); I would not be astonished to learn that AI was involved. As for the Scottish Gaelic words for oyster they cite, eisirein and eisirean are plurals of eisir, an alternate form of oisir ‘oyster,’ which is from Anglo-Norman oistre, just like the English word. Thanks, Bonnie!