Aral Sea documentary

A documentary from a reporter who traveled to Voz Island in the Aral Sea, former testing site for biological weapons of the Soviet Union. He followed the Kazakh water course across the desert, in order to reach the very place of one of the greatest ecological disasters. The Aral Sea has become totally toxic through mismanagement of the water supply and overuse of chemical pesticides. Learn more on the events that happened through this intriguing two part documentary.

The Aral Sea problem - part II

In the Soviet Union massive amounts of water were diverted for irrigation of cotton and the lake suddenly began to shrink dramatically. Soviet planners found cotton to be the perfect candidate for export in the Aral Sea region, being often refered to as white gold. The Kara Kum Canal opened in 1956, diverting more water from the Amu Darya into the desert of Turkmenistan and millions of hectares of land came under irrigation after 1960. The entire region's once prosperous fishing industry has been essentially destroyed, bringing unemployment and economic hardship. By the 1980s commercial fish was eliminated entirely, which in effect shut down over 60,000 jobs. In addition to the water problem, the soil also became contaminated because of the large amount of pesticides used and biological weapons tests conducted on the site. Read more about the disaster consequences here.

The Aral Sea problem

The Aral Sea is definitely one of the greatest environmental crises ever recorded. People have used the waters of the Aral Sea for thousands of years, borrowing it from two major nearby rivers. The first is Amu Darya, which flows into the Aral Sea from the south and the second is Syr Darya, which reaches the sea at its north end. Aral Sea is one of less than 20 ancient lakes in the world, estimated over 5 million years of age. The lake is located between Kazakhstan in the north and Karakalpakstan, an autonomous region of Uzbekistan. When you see a massive desert in the pictures, one can hardly believe that was the location of once one of the four largest lakes in the world with an area of 68,000 square km (26,300 sq mi). The water level 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 smaller lakes. In the meantime, salinity has increased fourfold. Read more about the Aral Sea disaster.