travel

Moynaq, Uzbekistan & the Aral Sea

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The Aral Sea stands as one of the greatest man-made ecological disasters of all time. The world’s 4th largest inland sea all but dried up within 40 years.

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Whew, 20 slices of sidemeat…we must be pushing a couple of pounds by now, eh?

I don’t know if “travel” is the best label for this little piece about Moynaq and the Aral Sea, but if I ever end up in Eastern Europe or Western Asia, I sure would love to visit.

So what’s the deal here?  What’s going on?  Let’s go back to the 1960’s.  At over 23,000 square miles, the Aral Sea – or the “Sea of Islands,” so named for the 1,100 or so islands that dotted the surface – was the fourth largest lake in the world.  It supported a booming fishing industry in Western Asia.  In the early 60’s, the Soviets decided the needed to grow cotton.  Long story short, the 2 rivers that fed the Aral Sea were diverted across arid expanses of present-day Uzbekistan.  It took several years to complete the project, and slowly but surely, the water level of the Aral Sea began to drop.

 

 

Despite their efforts, many of the canals were poorly constructed and even today remain highly inefficiently.  It’s estimated that, at least in the early years, anywhere from 30% to a whopping 75% of the diverted water was completely wasted before reaching the cotton crops.  Eventually the experiment proved successful; in 1989 Uzbekistan was the world’s largest exporter of cotton.  But it came at a terrible cost.

 

 

 

 

During the 60’s, the water level dropped by about 8 inches per year, jumping to 20-24 inches per year in the 70’s, and then 31-35 inches per year in the 1980’s when the most drastic shrinking began.  Various plans were devised to potentially refill the lake, while others considered it “nature’s error,” and ultimately nothing was done despite the growing negative consequences in the immediate area.  As it shrank, the salinity increased, killing most of the sea’s indigenous plant and animal life.  By 1987, the sea was divided into two separate bodies – the North Aral Sea (or the Lesser Aral) and the South Aral Sea (or the Greater Aral).

 

What replaces an inland lake like this?  In this case, a desert.  Known as the Aralkum, this area and the surrounding land have become extremely due to pesticide and fertilizer runoff, weapons testing, and industrial activities.  These pollutants collect in the dust and are then spread by wind.  Inhabitants of the former shore of the Aral Sea suffer increased counts of numerous diseases and ailments.  Worse still, the Aralkum is located within a strong global wind current, which has carried these pollutants as far as places like Antarctica and Greenland.

As horrible as all this sounds, it’s difficult to fathom the impact until looking directly at one of the places impacted the most by this slow-moving disaster: Moynaq, Uzbekistan (also Mo’ynoq and Muynak).  Moynaq was a thriving harbor that employed around 30,000 people connected to commercial fishing.  In addition the ships going in and out, there were canning factories right there in Moynaq to help process all the incoming fish.  The region of Karakalpakstan (where Moynaq lies) has been decimated since the 80’s when sea levels started falling drastically.

All that’s left in Moynaq are eeriely sad reminders of what this place once was.  The bizarre landscape, at once fascination and saddening, is littered with the decaying hulls of ships that once floated on clear blue waters.  Now nearly 100 miles from the closest shore of what remains of the Aral Sea, the toxic Aralkum has become a graveyard for the very sea itself.  It’s difficult to imagine how life looked here 30 or 40 years ago: docks bustling with activity, the sight and sound of ships and their crews, the incessant cawing of gulls, a cool sea breeze, waves gently splashing against the shore, the buzz of a way of life passed down from generation to generation, an endless blue expanse filled with the promise of prosperity….

…And now, nothing.  Nothing but an arid plain where a sea, a way of life, and a people, came to an abrupt and unnatural death.  That’s what Moynaq is.  Death.  Perhaps even worse, it is a lonely and forgotten death, left behind by time and remembered only by a few.  There is nothing else that can quite elicit such strong feelings of loss and desolation as much as a sea that’s been transformed into a desert.  Though beautiful in its otherworldliness, Moynaq is one of the saddest sights on the face of the planet.

What’s in store for the future of the Aral Sea?  So far, it seems to be up in the air.  Efforts are being made to restore some of the North Aral Sea and some moderate progress has been made through the use of dams.  The South Aral Sea remains largely neglected, however.  Due to rainfall and snowmelt, occasionally parts of the eastern basin will fill with water (creating 3 distinct sections of the sea) but the accumulation rapidly diminishes, reclaimed by the Aralkum.

Recently the 5 countries sharing territory with the Aral Sea – Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan – have adopted the Aral Sea Basin Program, an initiative responsible for the ultimate fate of the Aral Sea and former Aral Sea, whatever that may be.  Sadly, a lack of political interest has made progress slow in areas other than the North Aral Sea (located in Kazakhstan).  Uzbekistan (home of Moynaq and the southern portion of the area) has no intentions of redirecting one of the rivers that formerly led into the basin, instead choosing to use it to continue irrigating cotton fields.  Despite the massive amounts of wasted water and the inability of the Uzbek government to properly care for the cotton fields following the demise of the USSR, it continues to be a profitable industry for the country.  There is hope that eventually the North Aral Sea will be healthy enough to permanently open an existing sluice between it and the South Aral Sea, though the ultimate fate of the Aral Sea still remains unknown and any predictions are considered guesses at best.

And thus concludes the tale of the Aral Sea, for now at least.  It is a truly bizarre story and will probably stand as one of, if not the most, catastrophic man-made ecological disaster that the world has ever seen.

Written by The Cubist