Sprol

The Aral Sea is in the Republics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. It is largely shallow with many lagoons and islands and was once the world’s fourth largest body of inland water. Today, it is the eighth largest, and one of our greatest ecological disasters.

In the 1960′s increasing amounts of water were diverted from the Aral Sea to the Amudarya and Syrdarya rivers for irrigation of rice and cotton crops. Over the years, the Aral Sea has retreated by as much as a hundred meters, leaving a vast area littered with abandoned fishing boats and other marine equipment.

Photo credit: upyernoz

Because the volume of water has shrunk so much, the salt in the water has risen to toxic levels, 23% in the late 1980′s. Once carp, bream, sturgeon, pike-perch and other fish provided a good living for commercial fishermen. Others made a living trapping muskrats. By 1982, all commercial fishing had ended and about 60,000 people lost their livelihoods.

With 500 species of birds, 100 species of fish and 200 species of mammals, the Aral Sea Basin had a diversity of wildlife that compared with Africa. Most of these animals have now died.

Every year the prevailing northeast wind carries over one hundred million tons of salt-laden, fertilizer- and pesticide-contaminated dust from the former sea. This dust has been found in Antarctic penguins. The same deadly mix has filtered into the ground water and into irrigation water.

Hospitalization rates have risen dramatically and the mortality rate has gone up by fifteen times in a ten year period. Local child mortality, due to the deterioration of the environment, is higher than anywhere else in the former Soviet Union.

The remnant of the Aral Sea has been divided by a dam. The North Aral Sea has seen an increase in water level due to many large international projects. The success there has given some hope for the South Aral Sea, which had been abandoned to its fate.