and there was no more sea...

[bex77]

In an odd confluence of references, I learned about the Aral Sea today. It used to be the world's 4th largest lake, and it is about to disappear.

This follows one of the odd rules in my life...if I learn a new word or hear about a new place, I will see it again very soon in other places.

This morning it was the answer to a NYT crossword puzzle clue (59 Down - "Asia's shrunken ____ Sea"), and then this afternoon there's an article in the Boston Globe about the U.N. Secretary General visiting there yesterday. He called it "one of the planet’s most shocking environmental disasters." The photo of the stranded ships is freaky. http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2010/04/05/un_chief_decries_the_drying_up_of_the_aral_sea/

Wikipedia has great "before" and "after" satellite photos. It describes a Soviet project in the 60's to divert water from the rivers that fed it for irrigation canals to boost cotton farming. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea

Google maps shows it in detail if you use their satellite feature. It's on the border of Kazakhstan (Aktobe and Kyzylorda provinces) in the north and Karakalpakstan, an autonomous region of Uzbekistan, in the south.

I wonder where else it will show up in the next few days...

Comments

[dpolicar]

I am glad the rule it is following isn't that if you learn a new word or hear about a new place, the thing it refers to is about to disappear.

[ron_newman]

That's amazing and appalling all at once. Imagine the US without Lake Michigan.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

not to mention the the bioweapons research facility that used to be isolated on an island and now is on a penninsula.

nerdy video game trivia --
i'd always assumed the aral sea was the inspiration for some of the "highway 17" level in half life 2 (http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Highway_17) -- lots of ships far inland where they've been stranded, and looking at the site, there, it looks like i'm not the only one. (the game has a lot of very eastern-european-looking environments.)

[bedfull-o-books.livejournal.com]

He called it "one of the planet’s most shocking environmental disasters."

The thing is, though, that this isn't news. It has been an ecological disaster for years. A "once thriving seaside village" does not become a struggling village 60 miles from the shore over night (quoting a story I heard about the subject over the weekend).

I wonder what has happened that has made this news all of a sudden, now that it is probably too late to act.

(Yes, I know. Soviet Union. Closed borders, blah, blah, blah. The border's been "open" for years....)

And it is strange how things seem to cluster together like that.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Wow. I just now looked it up in my old atlas from the 80s, and there it was, the size of Bulgaria. Now it's gone? This world is truly insane.