Stac Lee

Stac Lee , in Scottish Stac Liath , in French “the stack gray” or “the blue stack”, is a Scottish island of the archipelago of Saint-Kilda bathed by the Atlantic Ocean. The island is a stack, a escarpé rock encircled by Falaise S, often round altitude with 172 meters. It is also a marilyn because the difference in altitude between the base of the rock and its top is higher than 150 meters.

Seen south, the rock appears as imposing a Falaise as broad as high with a top at a peak while seen west, its low thickness gives him the aspect of a thin needle whose top is bevelled according to an angle of 45°. Combined waves and winds are favourable at the formation and the transport of the spray which destroy the Végétation on cliffs and the coasts low of which those of Stac Lee.

In spite of contradictory opinions, it would seem that different the icecaps present on the British Isles would have covered Saint-Kilda and would have allowed by erosion the formation of many the stacks of the archipelago, of which Stac Lee, of which the largest gannet colony of of the world with: 60428 couples. The presence of these birds, the accumulation of their excrements and the frequent contribution of salted spray make that Stac Lee is free from all Végétation. This maritime life is represented by Algue S like Varech S ( Mastocarpus stellatus ), Fucus ( Fucus spiralis and Fucus distichus ) or Kelp S which forms true underwater forests favourable with the refuge of animals like slugs of sea, starfishes, soft coral, bryozoaires, hydres, etc It seems that they very early knew to benefit from the resources that offered the presence of thousands of birds of sea nesting in the Cliff S of which those of Stac Lee as the Scottish writer to it Martin Martin testifies which visits Saint-Kilda in 1697, with 120 meters of altitude and used for the housing of two people during the extraction of the guano which was held during September and August on the rock.

In 1931, benefitting from the recent departure of the last inhabitants of the archipelago whose living conditions become increasingly hard, the count of Dumfries, which acquired the archipelago the previous year, decides to transform it into sanctuary for the fauna and the wild Flore and to bequeath it to the National Trust for Scotland which obtains management in 1957 from it. Stac Lee, which belongs to the archipelago, undergoes the same fate.

Different the Falaise S from the archipelago was the subject of many rises, successful or not. But the difficulty of access to cliffs, the dangerosity of the rises, the absence of help in the archipelago and the disturbances caused by the climbing ones on the broods of the birds have constrained the National Trust for Scotland and the Scottish Natural Heritage to prohibit the climbing of cliffs including those of Stac Lee except authorization of their share.

Stac Lee is also famous for its sites of Plongée underwater characterized by a very clear water and landscapes made up of cliffs and drowned Grotte S

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