The pain of the Aral Sea

A few decades ago, the Aral Sea was famous for fishing, and no one could have imagined that where ships sail, where there are many fish, very soon everything would turn into a lifeless desert. The Aral Sea has dried up in forty years. The tragedy began in the 60s due to excessive water intake for agriculture. And by zero, in the once fourth largest lake in the world, only 10% of it remained. The area of the Aral Sea has decreased by three quarters. The ships ended up in a salty desert, and the people who lived along the shores were at the epicenter of an environmental disaster. Dust storms began to spread salt and toxic waste from fertilizers that flowed into the sea. Air pollution by toxic chemicals has led to an exacerbation of chronic, respiratory, cardiovascular and cancerous diseases. Abnormal infant and maternal mortality began to be noted in the Aral Sea region. The port and factories were closed, and it was a difficult time.The Muynak port now consists of rusty loading cranes and ships, the skeletons of factories, in some places viscous silt and a swamp.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, things got really bad. Military camps and businesses have disappeared. Unemployment appeared in the Aral Sea region, which lived off the sea, and there was not enough drinking water. It was turned on only at a certain hour. The entire population and even children queued for drinking water every day. But it also had a salty taste, because there were no purification systems. The people were getting poorer…They built their houses, or rather shacks, from reeds, coating them with clay, because there was nothing to buy building materials for. And in order to survive, people sawed ships abandoned in the sands and handed over scrap metal.…