On the way to what remains of the Aral Sea, groups of dromedaries and camels can be seen along the roadside. We are in the middle of the Kazak steppes and few species can survive in this inhospitable environment. The contrast between the beauty of the landscape and its harshness is overwhelming. Aral district, Kazakhstan, 2024

Credits: Simone Bergonzi (@simobergz, Italy)

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The smoke of a local bakery fills the air of a village deep in the Jizzakh region, Uzbekistan.

This photo was taken during the filming of Mission: Find Aral, a documentary investigating the ecological impact of the disappearance of the Aral Sea, the impact its drying up is having on local communities and the future of the region. The Aral Sea is a saltwater lake located in southern Uzbekistan and northern Kazakhstan.

Credits : Saxon Bosworth (@saxonbosworth, @missionfindaral, https://decouvrirlavie.com, United Kingdom)

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It is arguably the greatest man-made environmental catastrophe in history. Moynaq, once an important fishing town on the shores of the Aral Sea, now lies on the edge of the desert, with the Aral Sea pushed back 150 km! These two rusting ships have been towed, along with nine others, from another part of the desert to form a kind of tourist attraction. This is all that remains of the 500 or so boats that once docked in the town of Moynaq.

Credits: Matic Pavlin (@matic_pavlin, Slovenia)

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A PLACE IN CENTRAL ASIA – A victim of one of the greatest ecological catastrophes of the twentieth century, the Aral Sea, which is located in northern Uzbekistan and western Kazakhstan, has lost more than 75% of its total volume over many decades since the Soviet period. It has now reached the point of being called the “Aral Desert,” however, since the construction of a dam in 2005, hope seems to have returned to Aralsk, on the Kazakh side, as the water level begins to rise and fishermen fill their nets once again; but for how long?This article was originally published on Novastan’s French website on 28 May 2021. Since the 1960s, the cultivation of cotton rapidly increased in Central Asia. The Amu-Darya and the Syr-Darya rivers, which feed into the Aral Sea, were consequently diverted in order to irrigate the cotton plantations. The sea quickly lost 75% to 90% of its total volume and the water’s salinity increased dramatically, killing off most of the sea’s biodiversity. Water gave way to immense expanses of desert and salt flats. To this ecological disaster add social catastrophe: most of the population around the Aral Sea had relied on the fishing industry to make a living. Now, with the industry completely abandoned and villages left empty, a few families who stayed turned to camel breeding as a new way of life.

Located western Kazakhstan, Aralsk is a former fishing port and cotton trading centre. With the receding coast since the 1960s, the Aral Sea today is 90 kilometres from Aralsk. In strolling the city’s dusty streets at the end of 2019, it was difficult to imagine such a glorious seaside past; only the ruins of the port’s infrastructure and some maritime signage recalled a vanished prosperity that once was.

The Kokaral Dam, a bit of good news

The construction of the Kokaral Dam (or Dike Kokaral) in 2005 resulted in a six meter rise of the sea’s water level in the northern portion of the sea, called the Little Aral Sea. Inhabitants of Aralsk found hope in this, even though the sea remained more than 30 kilometres from its old piers. Read more on Novastan: The Aral Sea artemia: small shrimp, high stakes The stalls of the only fish shop in the city were soon stocked again and the main roads were finally paved, which led to a whisper of optimism among the sandy streets of the city.

In order to develop tourism, a few local guides began taking their chances with the imposing shells of old rusty boats. These old boats are in danger of disappearing as locals cut them up into metal sheets to reuse or sell. In the 2000s, fifteen of these boats were counted; at the end of 2019, only one remained. Even so, some Kazakh tourists enjoy a hot spring, formerly below sea level, for its rumoured miraculous powers.

In Tastubek, water is money

In Tastubek, located about one hundred kilometre’s from Aralsk, life goes on. The rise in sea level put fishermen back to work and woke up this village, which had been snoozing for several decades. The old ships had set out to sea again, new houses began to pop up; from only 90 houses in 1960, the village saw its population reduced to eight households in 1996, but in 2019 there were 32. Six o’clock in the evening, and the weather is ideal: the sun is bright and the wind non-existent. Nourljan and Arman collect the nets they untangled in the afternoon and take a spin in their UAZ, a Soviet off-road vehicle commonly used here. With the recent rise in water level, the sea is only a ten-minute drive from the village. At the shore they hop into their father’s old boat armed with three nets and a GPS tag, setting up for the following morning. With optimism and focus, these two young men are ready to fish some of the 15 species now reintroduced into the Aral Sea.

Determined fishermen

Alarms go off at five o’clock the following morning. Nourljan is hopeful as the calm of the previous night promises an excellent catch. A few minutes later Arman joins him in the UAZ. The bumpy former seabed tests the vehicle’s suspension and reinforces the determination of the two fishermen.

A 60-year-old widow, Vayan, lives with her son, Nourljan. When is he is out fishing, Vayan takes care of the house and helps her granddaughter with her homework. At noon, as with every return of the fishermen, fish will take the seat of honour at the table. She prepares camel meat for the evening meal, “The men go fishing and the women tend to the camels. That’s how it works here,” says Vayan, but she hopes her granddaughter will one day leave the village to study at a university.

The fishermen are active again

The three nets are collected and fish cover the floor; it’s time to go back. Arman’s face is serious: the catch wasn’t good today, despite ideal conditions. Only 12 kilograms were caught, versus about fifty on a typical day — a bit of respite for the seabed. Quotas are rarely respected in the Aral Sea, now a chronic victim of overfishing.

Tastubek has rediscovered its former glory. The fishermen live comfortably from their labour, and electricity finally lights their homes, but not all villages along the former shores of the Aral Sea have the same fate. Too far from the shore, some villages remain dormant, sometimes buried under sand; rambling and raising camels remain the only escape from an ordinary morning in this new life in the desert of the Aral Sea.

The disaster continues

The renewed enthusiasm of fishermen and of government announcements seems like a victory: the Aral Sea is saved! However, the reality is much more nuanced. If the sea’s disappearance has been partly avoided, the disaster continues against a background of optimism. The announcement of the sea’s miracle rescue has only served to increase local overconsumption of water and overfishing, accentuated by renewed demographic pressure. Worse still, the cultivation of rice and cotton, massive consumers of water, has not diminished in recent years. Moreover, if the Kazakh side is doing better, the historic Uzbek side remains hopelessly arid.

The Kokaral Dam has become a symbol of the mirage of Aral — a deliverer of promises and future disappointments. Many locals talk about increasing the height of the dam, which would allow water to return to the port of Aralsk, but skeptics have already become accustomed to the absurdity of living in a port with no sea. « A Place in Central Asia » is a collection of articles about under-represented or under-reported places in the region. Find out more by clicking here. Want to participate? Send your ideas about places to editorial[at]novastan.org.

Antoine Béguier Freelance Photographer

Translated from French by Judy Harter

Edited by Kiki Gray

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Main street in Moynaq, nowadays a dusty provincial town which once used to be a thriving port on the southern shore of Aral Sea and the center of fishing industry of the Uzbek SSR.Credit: Konstantin Novakovic (Serbia) Find all of our photos of the day here.

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Former fishing fleet of Moynaq lying in the lakebed of recessed Aral Sea which now occupies the Aralkum Desert in Uzbekistan. Credit: Konstantin Novakovic (Serbia) Find all of our photos of the day here.

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Aral Sea Monument in Moynaq placed above the former shore of the lake features the depictions of the Aral Sea in 1960 and the current state that are clearly showing its recession and the scale of this environmental disaster.

Credit: Konstantin Novaković (Serbia)

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On the ancient shores of a dried-up Aral Sea, a camel stands motionless, like a symbol of the region’s desertification.

Credit: Antoine Beguier (France)

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The blue of the Aral Sea, here on the Uzbek side, seems to mix with the clear sky on the horizon.

Credit: Simon Kretschmer (Germany)

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In Kazakhstan, fifty years ago, this house was located on the edge of the sea. As the Aral continues to dry up, the coastline has shifted by 90 km.

Credit : Antoine Béguier (France)

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In a hotel in Moynaq, a former coastal town on the Aral Sea, the owners are moving to a more prosperous town. They leave behind them a flaking painting depicting the Aral Sea in 1977.

Credit : Cyril Caldero (France)

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The Aral Sea in the far west of Uzbekistan, photographed from a yurt camp, glistens in the midday sun.

Credit: Simon Kretschmer (Germany)

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Living Asia’s journalists took a trip to the North Aral Sea, in Kazakhstan, where they witnessed the opening of a fish breeding plant, a hatchery. There, they saw the full process of transformation of eggs into young fish and their journey to the delta lake. In addition, they learnt how fishery professionals are trained in this region and explored how these projects help replenish the lake’s fish stocks.

This article first appeared in Russian on ЛИВЕНЬ. Living Asia on 11 November 2020.

As it dried up in the second half of the 20th century, the Aral Sea split into two bodies of water, the North Aral and South Aral, also known as Small and Large Aral. While the larger South Aral has itself become several lakes, efforts to revive the northern part have met with some success: water levels have risen and salinity has dropped, leading to the return of fish.

In a previous article, Living Asia discussed the death of fish during spring spawning season when water is discharged from Small Aral to Large Aral and about the annual decline of fish stocks in the Aral Sea. Unfortunately, with current intensive fishing, no-one is involved in replenishing them. This depletes fish stocks. Not only in the Aral Sea are fish stocks rapidly disappearing: they also are endangered in the other lakes of the delta of the Syr Darya River.

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For many years this region was the main supplier of fish for the entire former Soviet Union. In recent years, however, intensive fishing and poaching have caused immense damage to the ecosystem.

Ainakul Baimakhanova, coordinator of a group of projects for sustainable fishery in the Aral Sea region, said: “For locals, the fish living in these reservoirs is the most accessible foodstuff. More than one generation of fishermen grew up here. People are used to feeding their families this way. But the locals don’t think that the fish might tomorrow simply run out! Unsystematic, uncoordinated fishing counts as poaching, but the people living around the lake practice it anyway.”

The reduction of fish stocks already negatively impacts all the delta ecosystems. After all, lakes in that region of Kazakhstan like Akkol, Mariamkol, Kuan Darya and others are a part of the wetlands. Furthermore, they are within the borders of key ornithological areas. Fortunately, it is possible to regenerate the unique delta ecosystem of the region. It is already being done by re-stocking the fish population.

Opening a hatchery

To date, aquaculture has almost completely disappeared from the Aral District. Breeding fish is barely practiced by the local population and there are practically no hatcheries in the area. To repopulate the lake, juvenile fish up to a year old are brought in from the neighbouring district, which is 180-190 km away. This raises the costs of fish production and causes high losses during transportation. The fry (very young fish) simply do not survive on the road.

The capacity of existing fish farms in this region simply is not enough. To replenish lake stocks faster and more sustainably, there is the idea of setting up mid-sized hatcheries in the field.

Thus, in early 2020, the local public association “Kazaly Oasis” established a commercial hatchery and fish farm in the village of Aqshataý in the Aral District. This was possible thanks to the support of the fishing processing business Igilikov, the producer’s cooperative Jambyl and the United Nations’ GEF Small Grants Programme in Kazakhstan.

Through the project, local people, most coming from a long line of former fishermen, were educated in fishery. The celebratory opening of the fish hatchery in late June 2020 was attended by the head of the local district government (or akim), various other officials and Living Asia’s team.

Mukhtar Orazbaev, akim of the Aral District, says: “This is a very essential project for our region. We will be able to take young fish from the hatchery to release them into the Aral Sea and the neighbouring Kazalinsky District. If the hatchery works year-round, the fish stock in the lakes and sea will significantly improve. You are doing a great job, I wish you success!”

How the hatchery works

The fish breeding plant is located in a fairly large space of 16 by 30 metres. This is where the closed water supply units purchased by the project are located.

All parameters of the technological process (water conditioning, feeding, checks and more) are monitored and managed with the help of programmable automated devices. This minimises the influence of natural factors on the technological process.

The hatchery also breeds female fish which were rescued from the Aral Sea. The eggs are first stored in flasks before they are transferred to pools. Fish farmers and fishery specialists carefully observe all the processes in order to raise as much fry (very young fish) as possible.

The fry and fingerlings (juvenile fish in various stages of development) are distributed among twelve lake fish farms. They are put in special bags and transported by car to different areas of the water reservoir.

Ainakul Baimakhanova says: “All the locals are interested in the success of this project because the lake, water and fish are their life. In our district everyone is interested in working with us. People want to develop their businesses, they want to create new job opportunities in the towns and villages. Thanks to the changes, the population’s social situation improves every year.”

Education centre for fish specialists

Due to the growing demand for fish, small local fish-processing workshops have emerged in the Aral Sea region. This has increased the need for specialists with a certain level of professional skills. Modern fish-processing plants have to handle different types of fish and prepare them for export according to EU regulations.

Moreover, the region is lacking qualified fish farmers who could support local fishermen to competently collect fish from reservoirs and restock them.

To solve these problems, in 2019 an education centre for sustainable fishery technology and the protection of fish resources was established on the premises of the NGO Khana Aral Tolkyny. For a year, the centre has been training fishery experts.

A new cohort of specialists started training in February 2020. Classes were held in the centre and on location in the villages while practical training took place in fisheries.

Fish farmers were taught the particularities of different types of fish, breeding methods, artificial reproduction, technology for larvae germination, feeding, selection basics for fish breeding and the organisation of production processes for pond farming.

Fish processors learned to sort their catch and studied processing equipment and production technologies for salted, pickled and spicy products, canned fish and seafood.

Read more: The Aral Sea artemia: small shrimp, high stakes

The opening of the education centre is very important for the region. Thanks to it, unemployed women and young people finally found an outlet for their strengths and abilities. New specialists are already finding employment in fisheries and fish processing facilities.

Ainakul Baimakhanova says: “We planned to graduate 40 fish farmers, but in the end we trained 52. We graduated a bit more than 200 fish processors, just like we planned. But aside from farmers and processing professionals, we still need highly specialised experts. The issue of their training has not been resolved yet.

Now we are making arrangements with the Employment Centre, which helps to find jobs for the unemployed, trains hairdressers and so on. The Employment Centre could include fish farming and processing in the professions they teach. Our graduates have gained qualitative knowledge, which is why business owners are happy to take them in. Can you imagine how many more people could still find work?

I am grateful to the Small Grants Programme for supporting our ideas. We really need these projects for the revitalisation of our region.

We think of the future. We want to preserve biodiversity and nature’s beauty for future generations. So that there will be many types of fish in the water reservoirs, so that flowers grow on the waterside, so that things change for the better. So that people have good living conditions, happy children and a comfortable home.”

Oksana Tarnetskaya
ЛИВЕНЬ. Living Asia

Translated from Russian by Nora Heinonen

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The artemia, or brine shrimp, a small crustacean that lives in salt water, has become the main product of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan. The Uzbek government has recently centralised artemia production into a single company, a plan which did not seem to please everyone on the ground.

This article was originally published on Novastan’s French website on 21 July 2020.

The Aral Sea was the fourth largest lake in the world 60 years ago. Today, it has almost completely been dried out due to human activities, causing the disappearance of millions of fish and reducing the number of species by five. However, despite this environmental disaster, one species has survived: the artemia. With the sea now dried up, local fishermen have turned to this saltwater shellfish to generate the majority of their income. The fishermen of Moynaq, in western Uzbekistan, have thus started collecting and processing these shrimps due to the shortage of fish.

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The shrinking of the Aral Sea has increased the salinity of the water which explains the growing numbers of artemia, which thrive in very salty water. The 1 millimetre-long crustacean is generally used to feed fish but also has uses in science, fishkeeping, medicine, pharmacy and cosmetics. The larvae (known as cysts) can be stored for years and can withstand extreme differences in temperature.

Towards a monopoly

But the future of the artemia industry has been a source of controversy since since 2019. On 31 October 2019, the Uzbek government proposed that the 23 or so companies involved in the artemia industry be centralised into just one.

Despite the Antimonopoly Committee of the Republic of Uzbekistan’s protests and the recommendations against the project it published on 15 June 2020, Uzbekistan’s prime minister Abdulla Aripov signed a decree on 14 July of the same year creating a state-owned company responsible for the capture, processing and export of artemia cysts. The new structure, Orol Artemia Sanoat, is also meant to support the scientific, technical and technological development of the industry.

The Antimonopoly Committee of the Republic of Uzbekistan deemed this centralization ill-advised, an opinion it supports through a text recommending the Uzbek government be less involved in the economy. This point of view is in line with the political philosophy of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who says he wants to privatise the domestic economy by limiting state intervention.

Lack of data

It is difficult to measure the impact such a decision has had and will continue to have on the market. In 2020, Novastan attempted to obtain information locally but very few people were willing to talk about it. In fact, the lack of transparency and the strained context surrounding the negotiations over the last few weeks meant the fishermen of Muynaq did not wish to comment.

Only the press office of the Antimonopoly Committee of the Republic of Uzbekistan agreed to answer Novastan’s questions, stressing the importance artemia represents for the country. The head of its press service, Manzura Khasanova, said that data regarding the selling price and volume of export of artemia and industry wages did not exist. As for the land and sea portions where artemia is collected, they are under the supervision of the State Committee of the Republic of Uzbekistan for Geology and Mineral Resources.

Although instinctively artemia collection doesn’t seem to be a very sensitive industry, it remains opaque and very closed off in Uzbekistan. The only available data come from the international trade association Global Aquaculture Alliance, which ranked Uzbekistan among the world’s leading suppliers of artemia in 2017, with over 20 tons produced per year.

From the Uzbek side, little information is available to the public. Muynaq-based producers created an association in 2018 to lobby for transparency as well as promote export, but without providing much more detail so far.

The fishermen of Muynaq have been gathering, processing and selling artemia larvae since the early 2000s, when the world’s demand totalled 2,000 tons per year, according to scientific research. A small shellfish, then, but a major economic lifeline for the fishermen of Muynaq.

Malaurie Le Bail
Novastan.org

Translated from French by Manon Montant

Edited by Alice Coveney

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Children playing football on a street in Moynaq. Until a few years ago, this town in Karakalpakistan, an autonomous republic in western Uzbekistan, was still located on the shore of the Aral Sea.

Credit: Timur Karpov (Uzbekistan)

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