Back in the 1950s, the Aral Sea, which is on the territory of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, was the fourth largest lake in the world. Then it occupied about 68 thousand square kilometers, 426 km long and 284 km wide. Today, its volume is less than 75 sq. km, which is 900 times less than what it used to be!
The Aral Sea was an endorheic salt lake fed by the two main rivers Amudarya and Syrdarya. It began to be studied in the middle of the 19th century. And until the 50s of the 20th, its volumes and level did not change
However, in the 60s, active construction of irrigation canals began, and the water from the mentioned rivers start to go for irrigation and did not reach the Aral Sea. The lake began to dwindle
As the area of irrigated lands in the desert of Central Asia enlarged (and by 1990 it became 1.5 times more), the demand for water increased and the sea significantly decreased
The level of the Aral Sea fell rapidly: from 20 to 90 cm per year! Accordingly, the concentration of salt increased and the number of marine life decreased
If earlier there were 34 species of fish, more than half of which were commercial - they were caught in tons, there were fish factories and fish receiving points, then only 5 species remained, and the local fishermen (and these are thousands of people) lost their jobs
In 1989, the middle of the Aral Sea completely dried up, dividing it into two reservoirs - a small northern one (it is here that there are few fish left) and a large southern one (there are no fish at all), which in 2003 was divided into western and eastern reservoirs (the latter completely dried up in 2014)
There used to be an island of Vozrozhdenie (Renaissance) in the Aral Sea, but after the water level dropped by 22 meters, now it has become a peninsula. There is a former biochemical laboratory where bacteriological weapons were tested - who knows what is in the soil around?
In addition, deposits of pesticides and other agricultural pesticides have appeared on the former seabed of the Aral Sea. Reason: collector-drainage waters that go from the fields to the channel of the rivers Amudarya and Syrdarya
Dust storms carry these deposits over long distances and kill or slow down the growth of plants in the area, and also cause dangerous diseases and deaths among local residents
The climate of the region has also changed: summers have become drier and hotter, and winters have become colder and longer
In 2003-2005, Kazakhstan built the Kokaral dam, due to which only the Small (northern) Aral was saved from destruction
