The Muynak Ship Cemetery at the Desertified Aral Sea, Uzbekistan

It was extremely windy at Muynak. We warmed up again inside the Muynak Museum. Despite its small and humble collection of exhibits, I thought it well served the purpose of introducing the story of the Aral Sea. Before the 1960s, the Aral sea was thriving with life. It was the fourth largest body of salt water situated inlands. The main products of the Aral Sea were fish and fur. There was video footage at the museum showing the fish canning industry, with images of the abundance that once blessed this now-deserted community. The fish canning factory must have employed thousands of people. The footages conveyed a sense of upbeat optimism—there was food and there was work. Besides the fishes, the wildlife that once roamed the nature here included wild ducks, herons, swans, geese, pheasants, flamingoes, pelicans, swamp lynxes, eagles, sparrow hawks, wildcats etc. But in the early 1950s, the Soviet Union embarked on a program to increase river diversions to expand irrigated cotton production in this region, including parts of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Starting in 1954 with the construction of the Karakum Canal in Turkmenistan, large amounts of water were diverted from the former fresh water sources of the Aral Sea to irrigate fields. Gradually, the origin of the water for the Aral Sea, the rivers of Amu Darya (also known by the older name of the Oxus) and Syr Darya, were cut off. Half of the flows of these two rivers used to replenish the water at the Aral Sea. This decision of the Soviet Union had the immediate result of the sea level declining by 15 meters or so, and the surface area reduced by half. In the late 1970s, no water from the Syr Darya reached the Aral Sea, and the Amu Darya supplied only a minimal and dwindling volume. Until the early 1990s, fish had been shipped in from distant locations (the Arctic, the Baltic and the Pacific) for processing. The loss of fish productivity sparked a collapse of the industry and employment. In the 1960s, 43,430 metric tons of fish were caught in the Sea, dropping to 17,400 tons in 1970, to zero tons in 1980, and still now. This was devastating to the Karakalpakstan people, not least the fact that the environmental damage has caused an enormity on their health. #uzbekistantrip #shipcemetery #muynak #karakalpakstan #uzbekistan #sovietunion #environment #disaster #trip