The Aral Sea: A Tale of Evaporation and Desolation within Half a Century
There was a time when the Aral Sea fed tens of thousands of families in Central Asia and exported tons of fish to the Soviet Union. Today, in its place, lies a desert. The transformation, caused by the Soviet ambition to produce cotton at any cost, is one of the most remembered ecological tragedies of the 20th century.
### Moynaq, the port without sea
Moynaq was the only port city in a landlocked country for decades. Around 30,000 people worked in fishing and canning industries there. The sea reached up to the lighthouse and defined the local way of life. Today, that same lighthouse is barely a symbol of resistance, surrounded by an empty horizon where rusty ships rest, photographed by visitors as if they were sculptures.
Now, an improvised museum in Moynaq displays shells, stuffed sharks, and old canned goods to remember a sea that has practically disappeared.
### The cotton that dried up a sea
The drying up of the Aral Sea was not an accident but a political decision. Between 1965 and 1985, the USSR diverted the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers to irrigate cotton plantations. The water turned the soil into brine, carried pesticides, and destroyed biodiversity. In just half a century, the fourth largest lake in the world turned into a desert, while Uzbekistan emerged as a cotton giant.
The impact is still evident: dust storms laden with salt sweep through the region every year, forcing farmers to clean their fields. Temperatures became more extreme, and local communities were trapped in a impoverished environment.
### Tourism as a last resort
Despite being depressing, the Aral Sea disaster has turned into a tourist attraction. Travelers seeking extreme experiences arrive in Moynaq to explore the ship graveyard and continue by off-road vehicle to the small sea still standing in the north. There, yurt camps offer basic accommodation to those who want to witness an environmental disaster with their own eyes.
For activists like Yusup Kamalov, it’s a call to action. For travelers, it’s an opportunity to walk on a dry seabed. And for scientists, it’s a living warning of how human intervention can erase an entire ecosystem in a matter of decades.
