I used to catch 600-700 kilos of fish every day.

At the current pace, it could take 150 years to grow a forest here.

When the farm boom began in the 1960s, the Aral had a commercial fishery that brought in more than 40,000 tons of fish each year, hauled from the sea by ships more than a hundred feet long. Moynaq lies at the heart of Karakalpakstan, a semi-autonomous republic within Uzbekistan. There is a worldwide movement to boycott Uzbek cotton, and demand clothing manufacturers and retailers don’t sell it. Once the world’s fourth-largest freshwater lake, In fact there are concerns that the sea is still being drained, Syr Darya Control and Northern Aral Sea project, flounder was the only fish that could survive the high-salinity, Where Has All the Water Gone? The Uzbek side of the Aral Sea has turned to desert (Credit: Taylor Weidman Captains were usually ethnic Russians," Almas says proudly. “The suggestion that the Aral Sea would ever disappear completely is simply nonsense,” he says. Use our resources to learn more about how the Aral Sea was written off for dead to begin with, and why it won’t ever fully recover. "Here almost one in two trees has survived. There are, instead, two distinct bodies of water: the North Aral Sea (also known as the “Small Sea,” in Kazakhstan) and the South Aral Sea (in Uzbekistan). #BlackInNature: How Young Scientists are Pushing for Equality. The Aral Sea as a whole will never completely recover. Another investigation found that by the end of the late 1990s infant mortality was between 60 - 110 out of 1,000 births, a number much higher than the rest of Uzbekistan (48 per 1,000) and Russia (24 per 1,000). The loss of the Aral Sea in central Asia is an ecological disaster. It was no longer one body of water, but two lobes: a smaller North Aral Sea in Kazakhstan and a larger South Aral Sea in Uzbekistan. The Soviet authorities who expanded Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan's cotton industry did not foresee that herbicides and pesticides from their new plantations would run off into the rivers around them and end up in the Aral Sea. How is the Kokaral dam helping revive fish stocks in the North Aral Sea? Saving flood water to get through the droughts, How Soviet pollution destroyed the Aral Sea, one study concluded the occurrence of liver cancer doubled between 1981 and 1991, investigation found that by the end of the late 1990s infant mortality was between 60 - 110 out of 1,000 births. On the back of each tractor, a young man grabs a handful of seeds and feeds it into the thin trench. Read our privacy policy.

Can an ambitious project to plant millions of trees save the Karakalpak people of Uzbekistan? This all changed in the 1950s, when a Soviet irrigation project diverted river water to rice and cotton fields miles away. The system leaked, and the sea began to dry up. Seventy-eight-year-old Almas Tolvashev shuffles through the sand towards the rusting hulk of a fishing boat. Biodegradable Dog Poop Bags Might Be Too Good To Be True, The Arctic Hasn’t Been This Warm for 3 Million Years — and That Foreshadows Big Changes for the Rest of the Planet, Warmth Pouring Out of Siberia Sends Arctic Sea Ice Plummeting to Second Lowest Extent on Record. Is there anything I can do to preserve the South Aral Sea? The trees stop the wind picking up contaminated sand from the dried up sea bed and spreading them through the atmosphere. "Fishing was the first thing fathers taught their sons". (Credit: NASA Earth Observatory), Delta-8-THC Promises to Get You High Without the Paranoia or Anxiety, Why It’ll Take More Than One Vaccine to Beat COVID-19, Apollo-Soyuz Mission: When the Space Race Ended. 7 Minute Read By Dene-Hern Chen Several miles from Moynaq two tractors are inching across the horizon side-by-side. Save up to 70% off the cover price when you subscribe to Discover magazine.
Locals had to put labelled sticks in the ground to prove the shoreline was disappearing. "It's been cold and rainy lately, but we won't leave until we reach our goal". "It's important to prepare our children to be informed, compassionate & engaged global citizens." Its eastern basin dried up completely in 2014, and while it partially refilled in August 2017, Micklin says this was a temporary, seasonal change due to heavy rainfall. "The history of the Karakalpak people starts with the sea," says the former fisherman. With Uzbekistan currently drilling for oil and gas beneath the bone-dry bottom of the former sea, and local farmers still desperate for their own water, it’s unlikely the southern sea will expand. Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Reading diverse…. "We have successfully completed the first phase. He doesn't hide his excitement as he strokes the branch of one white-grey shrub that stands two and a half metres high. Since the restoration project began, he says, the North Aral Sea region has seen “a huge improvement to the economy and standard of living.”. Overall, Micklin is certain the sea will endure. The southern Aral Sea has been deemed beyond salvaging, and the restoration effort will instead focus on the much smaller, but less polluted and saline, northern sea (top right). The South Aral Sea, which consist of a strip of water in the west and a dried-out basin in the east, sits in Uzbekistan. As the sea dried up, toxic chemicals from the cotton industry were left exposed on the sea bed.

Until recently, many children died of diarrhoea". By the 1990s, the Aral had shrunk to less than half its former size and was dangerously salty. .css-po6dm6-ItalicText{font-style:italic;}This BBC series was produced with funding from the Skoll Foundation, Photography by Paul Ivan Harris. He remembers the illnesses that were specific to the region: "Respiratory problems, tuberculosis and kidney problems were widespread.
(National Geographic). The captain waves his hands above his head: "It's not like before, the weather is bad, there's all this dust in the air". More than a decade ago, Discover reported on an $85 million project to restore what was formerly one of the world’s biggest inland bodies of water: the Aral Sea. "We need to speed up the process. During wet and snowy years, these releases are common; in dry years, they are rare. Explore ideas, activities, and resources to spark creativity and curiosity from anywhere! The South Aral Sea is still in trouble, and I don’t have $86 million to help.

Sign up for our email newsletter for the latest science news. The river flow now efficiently irrigates fields … and runs into and rejuvenates the dried-up Aral Sea.”, In the 12 years since that story was published, water levels in the north lobe have risen by nearly 7 feet, salinity has stabilized and many species of fish have returned. The project, Discover reported in 2006, “has reconstructed nearly 60 miles of canals, sluices, and waterworks, dramatically improving water distribution in Kazakhstan. An oasis on the Silk Road trading route, the sea once covered more than 26,000 square miles across the heart of Central Asia, including parts of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. .css-8h1dth-Link{font-family:ReithSans,Helvetica,Arial,freesans,sans-serif;font-weight:700;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;color:#FFFFFF;}.css-8h1dth-Link:hover,.css-8h1dth-Link:focus{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}Read about our approach to external linking. "They have to lessen the impact of the dried up sea on people's health and that's why they are planting saxaul trees". For decades, these illnesses were an open secret. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. Managers use a sluice gate to let some water flow from the North Aral into the South Aral. As cotton production boomed, the Kremlin refused to acknowledge the problem. “The fisheries there are doing very well,” says Philip Micklin, a geographer emeritus from Western Michigan University who has studied the Aral Sea for decades and was featured in the original article. Locals experienced a swathe of health issues ranging from stunted growth, reduced fertility, lung and heart problems to increased rates of cancer. But the future of the South Aral Sea, with no major institutional support, is hazier. The saxaul is a shrub-like tree native to the deserts of central Asia, and now the first line of defence against climate change in Uzbekistan. "I was the first Muslim captain in Moynaq and my ship was the Volga. As the volume of water decreased, the concentration of salt increased, poisoning everything in the sea. The innovation turning desert sand into farmland, Meet the ex-miners who are now walking on water. Contaminated drinking water caused many problems and these were exacerbated when the water retreated.

Thanks to large-scale restoration efforts, the North Aral Sea has seen a resurgence of fish—a boon to the communities that rely on it. But there are still more than three million hectares to be covered. For example, one study concluded the occurrence of liver cancer doubled between 1981 and 1991. How has the North Aral Sea’s recovery brought new threats to the ecosystem? © 2020 BBC. The region’s fishing industry collapsed, and many residents fled. reference resource, Once Written Off for Dead, the Aral Sea Is Now Full of Life | Global Education Express, Ancient Hunting Camp Found Beneath Lake Huron, The Aral Sea itself plummeted—take a look at those satellite images above, or. The plan is to cover the entire former bed with a forest. But it's not just a way of life that has been affected. Want it all?