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ARAL SEA
The Aral Sea is a saline endorheic basin in Central Asia; it lies between
Kazakhstan (Aktobe and Kyzylorda provinces) in the north and Karakalpakstan,
an autonomous region of Uzbekistan, in the south. The name roughly translates as
"Sea of Islands", referring to more than 1,500 islands that once dotted its waters.

Once among the four largest lakes of the world with an area of 68,000
square kilometres (26,000 sq mi), the Aral Sea has been steadily shrinking since
the 1960s after the rivers that fed it were diverted by Soviet Union irrigation
projects. By 2007 it had declined to 10% of its original size, splitting into three
lakes the North Aral Sea and the eastern and western basins of the once far larger
South Aral Sea. By 2009, the south-eastern lake had disappeared and the south-
western lake retreated to a thin strip at the extreme west of the former southern
sea. The maximum depth of the North Aral Sea is 42 metres (138 ft) (as of 2008).
The region's once prosperous fishing industry has been virtually destroyed,
bringing unemployment and economic hardship. The Aral Sea region is also
heavily polluted, with consequent serious public health problems. The retreat of
the sea has reportedly also caused local climate change, with summers becoming
hotter and drier, and winters colder and longer.
There is now an ongoing effort in Kazakhstan to save and replenish the
North Aral Sea. As part of this effort, a dam project was completed in 2005; in
2008, the water level in this lake had risen by 12 metres (39 ft) from its lowest
level in 2003.[1] Salinity has dropped, and fish are again found in sufficient
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Nim : 071 404 155

numbers for some fishing to be viable. However, the outlook for the remnants of
the South Aral Sea remains bleak.
History
Early human use and navigation

Russian military presence on the Sea of Aral started in 1847, with the
founding of Raimsk, which was soon renamed Aralsk, near the mouth of the Syr
Darya. Soon, the Imperial Russian Navy started deploying its vessels on the sea.
Owing to the Aral Sea basin not being connected to other bodies of water, the
vessels had to be disassembled in Orenburg on the Ural River, shipped overland to
Aralsk (presumably by a camel caravan), and then re-assembled. The first two
ships, assembled in 1847, were the two-masted schooners named Nikolai and
Mikhail. The former was a warship, the latter a merchant vessel meant to serve for
the establishment of the fisheries on the great lake. In 1848, these two vessels
surveyed the northern part of the sea. In the same year, a larger warship, the
Constantine, was assembled as well. Commanded by Lt. Alexey Butakov, the
Constantine completed the survey of the entire Aral Sea over the next two years.
[5] The exiled Ukrainian poet and painter Taras Shevchenko participated in the
expedition, and painted a number of sketches of the Aral Sea coast.
For the navigation of 1851, two newly built steamers arrived from
Sweden, again via caravan from Orenburg. As the geological surveys had found
no coal deposits in the area, the Military Governor-General of Orenburg Vasily
Perovsky ordered "as large as possible supply" of saxaul (a desert shrub, akin to
the creosote bush) to be collected in Aralsk for use by the new steamers.
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Unfortunately, saxaul wood did not turn out a very suitable fuel, and in the
later years the Aral Flotilla was provisioned, at substantial cost, by Donets coal.
In 1918, the Soviet government decided that the two rivers that fed the Aral Sea,
the Amu Darya in the south and the Syr Darya in the northeast, would be diverted
to irrigate the desert, in order to attempt to grow rice, melons, cereals, and cotton.
30 million roubles was spent on the scheme, and Lenin said that "Irrigation will
do more than anything else to revive the area and regenerate it, bury the past and
make the transition to socialism more certain".
Impact on environment, economy and public health

Aral Sea Dust Storm, March 2010

The ecosystem of the Aral Sea and the river deltas feeding into it has been
nearly destroyed, not least because of the much higher salinity. The receding sea
has left huge plains covered with salt and toxic chemicals – the results of weapons
testing, industrial projects, pesticides and fertilizer runoff – which are picked up
and carried away by the wind as toxic dust and spread to the surrounding area.
The land around the Aral Sea is heavily polluted and the people living in the area
are suffering from a lack of fresh water and health problems, including high rates
of certain forms of cancer and lung diseases. Respiratory illnesses including
tuberculosis (most of which is drug resistant) and cancer, digestive disorders,
anaemia, and infectious diseases are common ailments in the region. Liver, kidney
and eye problems can also be attributed to the toxic dust storms. Health concerns
associated with the region are a cause for an unusually high fatality rate amongst
vulnerable parts of the population. There is a high child mortality rate of 75 in
every 1,000 newborns and maternity death of 120 in every 10,000 women. Crops
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in the region are destroyed by salt being deposited onto the land. Vast salt plains
exposed by the shrinking Aral have produced dust storms, making regional
winters colder and summers hotter.
The Aral Sea fishing industry, which in its heyday had employed some
40,000 and reportedly produced one-sixth of the Soviet Union's entire fish catch,
has been decimated, and former fishing towns along the original shores have
become ship graveyards. The town of Moynaq in Uzbekistan had a thriving
harbor and fishing industry that employed approximately 60,000 people;
[contradiction] now it lies miles from the shore. Fishing boats lie scattered on the
dry land that was once covered by water; many have been there for 20 years. The
only significant fishing company left in the area has its fish shipped from the
Baltic Sea, thousands of kilometres away.
North Aral Sea restoration work

Work is being done to restore in part the North Aral Sea. Irrigation works
on the Syr Darya have been repaired and improved to increase its water flow, and
in October 2003, the Kazakh government announced a plan to build Dike Kokaral,
a concrete dam separating the two halves of the Aral Sea. Work on this dam was
completed in August 2005; since then the water level of the North Aral has risen,
and its salinity has decreased. As of 2006, some recovery of sea level has been
recorded, sooner than expected. "The dam has caused the small Aral's sea level to
rise swiftly to 38 m (125 ft), from a low of less than 30 m (98 ft), with 42 m (138
ft) considered the level of viability." Economically significant stocks of fish have
returned, and observers who had written off the North Aral Sea as an
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environmental disaster were surprised by unexpected reports that in 2006 its

returning waters were already partly reviving the fishing industry and producing
catches for export as far as Ukraine. The restoration reportedly gave rise to long
absent rain clouds and possible microclimate changes, bringing tentative hope to
an agricultural sector swallowed by a regional dustbowl, and some expansion of
the shrunken sea. "The sea, which had receded almost 100 km (62 mi) south of the
port-city of Aral, is now a mere 25 km (16 mi) away." The Kazakh Foreign
Ministry stated that, “The North Aral Sea's surface increased from 2,550 square
kilometers (985 square miles) in 2003 to 3,300 square kilometers (1,275 square
miles) in 2008. The sea's depth increased from 30 meters (98 ft) in 2003 to 42
meters (138 ft) in 2008.” There are plans to build a new canal to reconnect Aralsk
with the sea. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2009, by which time it is hoped
the distance to be covered will be only 6 km (3.7 mi). A new dam is to be built
based on a World Bank loan to Kazakhstan, with the start of construction also
slated for 2009 to further expand the shrunken Northern Aral eventually to the
withered former port of Aralsk.

Future of South Aral Sea

The South Aral Sea, which lies in poorer Uzbekistan, was largely
abandoned to its fate. Projects in the North Aral at first seemed to bring glimmers
of hope to the South as well: "In addition to restoring water levels in the Northern
Sea, a sluice in the dike is periodically opened, allowing excess water to flow into
the largely dried-up Southern Aral Sea." Discussions had been held on recreating
a channel between the somewhat improved North and the desiccated South, along
with uncertain wetland restoration plans throughout the region, but political will is
lacking. Uzbekistan shows no interest in abandoning the Amu Darya river as an
abundant source of cotton irrigation, and instead is moving toward oil exploration
in the drying South Aral seabed. Attempts to mitigate the effects of desertification
include planting vegetation in the newly exposed seabed.