Aral Sea

• 1. Introduction

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  After a visit to the town of Muynak in 2011, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called the shrinking of the Aral Sea "one of the planet's worst environmental disasters". The Aral Sea was a salt lake that lay between Kazakhstan to the north and Uzbekistan to the south. Its name roughly translates from Mongolic and Turkic languages as Sea of Islands. More than 1,100 islands once dotted its waters. By 2007 the sea had largely dried up into desert. How does a lake of that size vanish in a few decades? What lived in it, and who depended on it? What did its death do to the people who stayed behind? And can any part of it be brought back?

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• 2. Rivers and Empires

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  The Amu Darya river once ran to the Caspian Sea through the Uzboy Channel, not to the Aral. That lasted until the Holocene, when the river changed course and began feeding the Aral from the south. Geographer Nick Middleton believes the river did not flow into the Aral before that time. Today its mouth lies in a dried-up stretch of what was once the sea.

  Around 2500 years ago, according to a theory from Sergey Tolstov, people broke the old link to the Caspian. His idea is that they wanted to feed the Aral Sea and the irrigation system of Khorezm, around Khiva and other cities. Climate pushed the water level too. Glacial melt at the rivers' headwaters and rain across the basins set the inflow, and cold, dry spells restrict both. Artificial irrigation began in ancient times and has never stopped.

  During the Tang dynasty, the Aral Sea formed part of the western frontier of the Chinese Empire. Later, the Mongol invasion destroyed cities and waterworks across the region. The Amu Darya shifted its route, and Lake Sarykamysh refilled and joined the Caspian Sea once more. Three Mongol hordes then divided the territory: the Jochi, or Golden Horde, the Ilkhanids and the Chagatai.

  In 1417 the Muslim geographer Hafiz-i Abru wrote that the Aral Sea had disappeared, because diversions had taken water from both rivers. The Syr Darya returned to its natural course only after 1573, when the channels that carried it south fell into disrepair. The surface then rose steadily, and for the next four centuries the basin stayed flooded.

  In 1847 the Russians founded Raimsk, soon renamed Fort Aralsk, near the mouth of the Syr Darya. Because the Aral touches no other water, the Imperial Russian Navy took its ships apart at Orenburg on the Ural River. The pieces went overland and were put back together at Aralsk. The first two vessels, assembled in 1847, were the two-masted schooners Nikolai and Mikhail. Nikolai was a warship. Mikhail was a merchant vessel meant to start fisheries.

  In 1848 the two schooners surveyed the northern part of the sea. That was also the year a larger warship, the Constantine, was assembled. Lieutenant Alexey Butakov commanded the Constantine, which finished surveying the entire sea over the next two years. Exiled Ukrainian poet and painter Taras Shevchenko took part in the expedition and made a number of sketches.

  Two newly built steamers arrived from Sweden in 1851. Geological surveys had found no coal nearby. So Vasily Perovsky, Military Governor-General of Orenburg, ordered an "as large as possible supply" of saxaul to be gathered at Aralsk. Saxaul wood proved a poor fuel. In later years the Aral Flotilla ran on coal from the Donbas, at substantial cost. Meanwhile the dealers Lapshin, Ritkin, Krasilnikov and Makeev started the sea's fishing trade, and their business later grew into major fishing unions.

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• 3. White Gold

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  In the early 1960s the Soviet government wanted cotton, nicknamed "white gold", to become a major export. To grow it, along with melons, rice and cereals, planners turned the Amu Darya in the south and the Syr Darya in the east away from the Aral Sea and onto the desert. The plan worked at first. By 1988 Uzbekistan was the world's largest cotton exporter. The price was heavy use of agro-chemicals, including dioxins that stayed in use after they were banned. Farmers, children among them, were harmed by the chemicals, and the soil degraded badly. Cotton is still Uzbekistan's main cash crop. It accounted for 17% of the country's exports in 2006.

  Large-scale canal building began in the 1930s and expanded greatly in the 1960s. Many canals were poorly built, and water leaked and evaporated. Between 30 and 75% of the water in the Qaraqum Canal, the largest in Central Asia, went to waste. A 2012 estimate found that only 12% of Uzbekistan's irrigation canal length was waterproofed.

  As early as 1964, Aleksandr Asarin at the Hydroproject Institute pointed out that the lake was doomed. He later explained why nobody objected: "It was part of the five-year plans, approved by the council of ministers and the Politburo. Nobody on a lower level would dare to say a word contradicting those plans, even if it was the fate of the Aral Sea." Some Soviet experts apparently saw the Aral as "nature's error". In 1968 one Soviet engineer said, "it is obvious to everyone that the evaporation of the Aral Sea is inevitable."

  A rival scheme appeared in the same decade. It proposed redirecting part of the flow of the Ob basin rivers to Central Asia through a gigantic canal system, with refilling the Aral as one of its main goals. Staggering costs and negative public opinion in Russia proper killed it. The federal authorities had abandoned the project by 1986.

  By 1960, between 20 and 60 cubic kilometres of water a year was going to the land instead of the sea, and the sea began to recede. From 1961 to 1970 its level fell by an average of 20 centimetres a year. In the 1970s the rate nearly tripled, to 50-60 centimetres a year. In the 1980s it reached 80-90 centimetres. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the surface had held steady at 53 metres above sea level. By 2010 the large Aral stood at 27 metres and the small Aral at 43 metres.

  In 1960 the sea covered 68,000 square kilometres and held 1,100 cubic kilometres of water. By 1998 its area had dropped to 28,687 square kilometres, and it ranked only eighth among the world's lakes. From 1960 to 1998 the surface area shrank by 60% and the volume by 80%. Salt climbed as the water fell. Salinity began at 10 grams per litre and reached 376 grams per litre by 1990. Typical seawater holds 35, and the Dead Sea between 300 and 350.

  The sea split into two bodies of water in 1987. The North Aral is also called the Lesser or Small Aral. The South Aral is the Greater or Large Aral. In 2003 the South Aral divided again, into eastern and western basins. Its deepest water was saltier and did not mix with the surface, so only the top layer warmed in summer. That made evaporation faster than predicted. In 2004 the surface area was 17,160 square kilometres, 25% of the original. A nearly fivefold rise in salinity had killed most of the flora and fauna. In August 2014, NASA satellite images showed the eastern basin completely dry for the first time in modern history. It is now called the Aralkum Desert.

  Uzbekistan gained independence from the Soviet Union in June 1991. Craig Murray, the UK ambassador to Uzbekistan in 2002, blames the shrinking of the 1990s on President Islam Karimov's cotton policy. In his account the irrigation system was massively wasteful, and crops were not rotated. Huge quantities of pesticides and fertilizer went onto the land, and runoff carried them into the shrinking sea. As demand for cotton grew, the government applied still more to depleted, monocultured soil. Forced labor was used, and powerful, well-connected people siphoned off the profits.

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• 4. Life in the Water

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  Three endemic sturgeon species swam in the Aral Sea basin, part of an exceptional array of endemic fish subspecies. The sea itself had relatively low native biodiversity despite its size. Its native fish included the ship sturgeon, all three Pseudoscaphirhynchus sturgeons, the Aral trout, northern pike, ide, asp, Turkestan barbel, common bream, Wels catfish, zander and European perch. All of them except the Ukrainian stickleback were anadromous or semi-anadromous, meaning they moved between the sea and its rivers.

  Rising salinity and drying drove the Aral trout, ruffe, Turkestan barbel and every sturgeon out of the lake. Dams now block their return routes. The Aral trout and the Syr Darya sturgeon, Pseudoscaphirhynchus fedtschenkoi, may be extinct because their range was so restricted. The stickleback persisted through the shrinkage. Most other native fish vanished too, but many have come back to the North Aral Sea as it recovered from the 1990s onward.

  During the 1960s, hydropower and irrigation projects cut the flow of fresh water and raised the salt. Salt-tolerant fish then arrived, some on purpose and some by accident. They included Baltic herring, big-scale sand smelt, several gobies, grass carp, silver carp, bighead carp, black carp and northern snakehead. The herring, sand smelt and gobies were the lake's first plankton-eating fish. Zooplankton collapsed. Then the herring and sand smelt collapsed too, and neither has recovered.

  The carp, the snakehead and possibly the pipefish did not survive the shrinking and the rising salt. European flounder was introduced to revive the fisheries. In the South Aral Sea, herring, sand smelt, gobies and flounder held on until salinity eliminated all but the gobies.

  Before the shrinkage, the sea held about 250 native species of aquatic invertebrates. Roughly 80% were freshwater species. Rotifers, cladocerans and copepods dominated. A single amphipod, Dikerogammarus aralensis, represented the advanced crustaceans, and it was endemic to the Syr Darya basin. Native bivalves included an endemic subspecies of zebra mussel and the lagoon cockle. The introduced fish cut many of these invertebrates back sharply.

  A later attempt to bring mullet from the Caspian Sea accidentally brought in the rockpool shrimp. The shrimp is thought to have wiped out the amphipod in the sea, and the amphipod now survives only in the Syr Darya basin. The copepod Calanipeda aquaedulcis was introduced to replace the zooplankton the herring had reduced. The North American mud crab Rhithropanopeus harrisii arrived by accident during that effort.

  In the North Aral, falling salinity from the 1990s let lost crustaceans and rotifers return naturally by way of the Syr Darya. The cladoceran Moina mongolica came back, and the zebra mussel was reintroduced. The South Aral tells a different story. Only a few nematodes, rotifers and parthenogenic brine shrimp live there. The future of invertebrates in every remaining fragment of the sea depends on how its salinity changes.

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• 5. Dust and Hardship

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  At its peak the Aral fishing industry employed some 40,000 people and reportedly produced one-sixth of the Soviet Union's entire fish catch. In the 1980s the harvests became unsustainable, and by 1987 commercial fishing had stopped. Salinity grew too high for the 20 native fish species. Only the flounder survived, and it was killed off in the South Aral in the late 1990s.

  The town of Aral, originally the main fishing port, now sits about 15 kilometres from the water, and its population has fallen sharply. Moynaq in Uzbekistan had a thriving harbour that employed about 30,000 people. It now lies 30-90 kilometres from the shore. Fishing boats are scattered across dry, dusty ground, and many have sat there for 20 years. Muskrat trapping in the Amu Darya and Syr Darya deltas, which once yielded as many as 500,000 pelts a year, was destroyed as well.

  The receding sea left huge plains covered with salt and with toxic chemicals from weapons testing, industrial projects and farm runoff. As water and soil worsened, pesticides were used more and more from the 1960s to raise cotton yields. That added toxins such as HCH, TCCD and DDT. Industrial pollution added PCBs and heavy metals. With so little water left, these pollutants concentrated in the remaining sea and across the dry bed.

  The wind carried them. People in the lower river basins and former shore zones swallowed the toxins in local water and breathed them in as dust. Plants and livestock absorbed them, and the toxins entered the food chain. Many bioaccumulate and are hard for the liver and kidneys to clear. Residents commonly lack fresh water. High rates of certain cancers, respiratory illnesses including mostly drug-resistant tuberculosis, digestive disorders, anaemia and infectious diseases are widespread. In 2009 child mortality stood at 75 per 1,000, and maternal mortality at 12 in every 1,000.

  Salt blown off the seabed ruins farmland as well. Crops are destroyed where it settles, and the most heavily affected fields must be flushed with water four times a day. A 1998 study found that few crops besides fodder tolerate the degradation, which limits what Kazakhstan's farmers choose to plant. The loss of the sea also changed the climate. Surface temperatures and wind patterns shifted, the annual temperature range widened by about 4 to 12 degrees Celsius, and storms carry more dust.

  Mothers in the region have organochlorides, PCBs, DDT compounds and TCDD in their blood and breast milk. These toxins can pass to children, causing low birthweight and congenital abnormalities. Infants are born with abnormalities five times as often as in European countries. In the Aral Sea region, 26% of children are born at low birthweight. Renal tubular dysfunction shows extremely high prevalence in children and can be linked to stunted growth and development.

  Research is thin. Only 26 English-language peer-reviewed articles and four reports on children's health appeared between 1994 and 2008. Many medical facilities in the Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan regions lack medication and equipment. The health information system is meager, and primary care is largely absent. The poor suffer most. At least 4.4 million people, mostly downstream and in former coastal communities, were among the first harmed, and their fishing livelihoods vanished with the water.

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• 6. Island of Secrets

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  Vozrozhdeniya, a name that is Russian for "rebirth", was an island in the middle of the Aral Sea. In mid-2001 the shrinking water turned it into a peninsula, and it later joined the mainland. Kokaral and Barsa-Kelmes shared a similar fate. After the Southeast Aral disappeared in 2008, Vozrozhdeniya effectively ceased to exist as a distinct geographical feature. The area is now shared by Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and it is disputed territory.

  In 1948 the Soviet Union established a top-secret bioweapons laboratory on the island. Its exact history, functions and current status remain unclear. The agents tested there included anthrax, plague, smallpox, tularemia, botulinum toxin and Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus, along with several other pathogens.

  In 1971 weaponized smallpox from the island reached a nearby ship. The virus then spread to the city of Aral. Ten people there were infected and three of them died. A massive vaccination effort followed, covering 50,000 inhabitants.

  The base was abandoned in 1992, after the Soviet Union disintegrated the year before. Scientific expeditions showed that the island had been a site for the production, testing and later dumping of pathogenic weapons. In 2002 the United States organized a project, with Uzbekistan's assistance, that decontaminated 10 anthrax burial sites. According to the Kazakh Scientific Center for Quarantine and Zoonotic Infections, all of the anthrax burial sites have since been decontaminated.

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• 7. Rescue Efforts

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  On the 18th of February 1992 the Interstate Commission for Water Coordination of Central Asia was formed. It united Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in the hope of solving the region's environmental and socioeconomic problems. The International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea followed on the 23rd of March 1993, created by the commission to raise money for Aral Sea Basin programmes. In January 1994 the five countries pledged 1% of their budgets to help the sea recover. The fund has held joint summits and won World Bank money, though enforcement and slow progress remain challenges.

  Many remedies have been proposed over the years. They include improving the irrigation canals, using cotton species that need less water, using fewer chemicals, and growing crops other than cotton. One idea was to redirect water from the Volga, Ob and Irtysh rivers, which would restore the sea to its former size in 20-30 years at a cost of US$30-50 billion. Another was to pump seawater in from the Caspian through a pipeline and dilute it with local fresh water.

  The first phase of the Aral Sea Basin Programme was ineffectual, mainly because it improved land around the sea without touching water use upstream. Cooperation was also hard. Downstream communities receive water for irrigation in spring and summer. In return they supply upstream countries with fuel in winter, rather than upstream storing water for winter hydropower. Very few legal obligations bind these arrangements. The second phase, which began in 1998 and ran for five years, was drawn up by the World Bank, government representatives and technical experts without consulting the people affected. Its public awareness efforts were seen as propaganda.

  On the 6th of October 2002 the heads of state met again to revise the programme. The second programme ran from 2003 to 2010 and covered environmental, socioeconomic and water management issues. The IFAS member countries provided over 2 billion US dollars. The 3rd programme was developed on the 28th of April 2009 and ran from 2011 to 2015. Its four directions were integrated use of water resources, environmental protection, socio-economic development, and improving institutional and legal instruments.

  The most visible success came in the north. Kazakhstan announced a plan in October 2003 to build Dike Kokaral, a concrete dam across the Berg Strait, the deep channel linking the North and South Aral. The dam is eight miles long, and it can hold over 29 cubic kilometres of water in the North Aral. It allows any excess to flow south. Work was completed in August 2005. The water rose sooner than expected, from a low of less than 30 metres to 42 metres by 2008, which is considered the level of viability.

  The Kazakh Foreign Ministry stated that the North Aral's surface grew from 2,550 square kilometres in 2003 to 3,300 square kilometres in 2008. Salinity fell from 30 grams per litre to 8, and almost 24 freshwater species returned. By 2006 the fishing industry was already reviving, with catches exported as far as Ukraine. The restored waters reportedly even brought long-absent rain clouds. The shoreline, once almost 100 kilometres south of the port city of Aralsk, had moved to within 25 kilometres. A second dam, funded by a World Bank loan to Kazakhstan, was slated to start in 2009 and was postponed to 2011. It would cut the distance to Aralsk to only 6 kilometres, and a canal would then reconnect the former port with the sea.

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• 8. The Southern Seabed

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  The South Aral Sea, half of which lies in Uzbekistan, was abandoned to its fate. Most of Uzbekistan's part of the sea is completely desiccated. Only excess water from the North Aral is periodically allowed through a sluice in the dike into the largely dried-up South. Talk of recreating a channel between north and south has produced nothing, because political will is lacking. Unlike Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan shows no sign of giving up the Amu Darya for its cotton irrigation.

  On the 30th of August 2006 Uzbekistan's deputy prime minister, Ergash Shaismatov, announced a production-sharing agreement to explore for oil and gas in the Aral Sea. The partners were Uzbekneftegaz, LUKoil Overseas, Petronas, the Korea National Oil Corporation and China National Petroleum Corporation. The consortium had been created in September 2005. Shaismatov said, "The Aral Sea is largely unknown, but it holds a lot of promise in terms of finding oil and gas. There is risk, of course, but we believe in the success of this unique project." As of the 1st of June 2010, 500,000 cubic metres of gas had been extracted from a depth of 3 kilometres.

  For the exposed seabed, the focus is on planting. In Uzbekistan the reforestation uses desert-adapted plants: Haloxylon ammodendron, Ephedra strobilacea, Salsola species and Tamarix species. The eventual aim is up to 200,000 hectares of forest, meant to slow desertification and shield nearby communities from sandstorms. Intermittent flooding of the eastern basin is likely to complicate any development there. Redirecting what little Amu Darya flow remains toward the western basin might save fisheries there and relieve the flooding in the east.

  On the 15th of June 2021 Kazakhstan's Central Communications Service announced a plan to plant saxaul trees across one million hectares of the drained Aral seabed, to stop dust storms. Saxaul is Haloxylon ammodendron, the same wood that failed as steamer fuel at Aralsk in 1851. UNESCO has added historical documents about the Aral Sea to its Memory of the World Register, as a resource for studying the environmental tragedy.

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