Water Unites

Aral Sea
In early 1992, while travelling from Ashgabat to Dushanbe, Tashkent, Bishkek and
Almaty, I heard a lot of stories about the Aral Sea catastrophe. So it was only natural
that I wanted to see it with my own eyes. In May 1993, I finally hired a plane for a group
of German politicians to fly to Aralsk, the old port town. Halfway up at an altitude of
almost 10,000 meters the pilot said to me: «I’m sorry, there is no airport near the Aral
Sea; we have to land in Kzyl-Orda». What to do? On the horizon, in the evening sun,
a cargo helicopter of the former Soviet army was parked on the runway. The Russian
pilot, who looked as if he had come straight out of an action movie, was travelling with
his young son. Fortunately for us, he just wanted to fly to Aralsk. He picked us up and
he agreed to show us the whole region over the next two days. People in Aralsk were not
particularly enthusiastic about our visit. «You come, you ask many stupid questions and
then you leave-what remains for us?» was the tenor. «Disaster tourism, we don’t need
that,» they would say. The sea had already withdrawn for many miles from Aralsk. During
the helicopter flight to the Kokaral Dam site, about 150 km south towards Uzbekistan,
we saw the cargo ships lying in the sand. Pictures I had seen so often. We landed at a spot
that I would visit again 18 years later. Today at this place, fishermen talk about a miracle.
The northern Aral Sea has returned. A dike was finally completed in 2005. This time it
was solidly built. Before, in the early 1990s, several efforts were undertaken to build this
dike, but wrong designs and wrong materials always led to disasters and the dikes were
washed away.
Since 2005, the 13-km long dam has collected water in the northern Aral Sea.
This important project was funded by the World Bank. This proves that the right steps
are being taken to save the northern part of the Aral Sea. For example, in 2010, so much
water flowed down the Syr Darya into the northern part of the Aral Sea that large quantities
of it had to be released into the southern part, where it would eventually evaporate.
Meanwhile, the small Aral Sea now covers a surface of 3 000 square kilometers, compared
to 68 000 square kilometers in 1960. The government of Kazakhstan plans to raise
the existing dam or build another one near Aralsk. Maybe one day water will return to
the old port town of Aralsk. With the recovery of nature, people have returned to the
lifestyles they had lost many years ago. The water is less salty and the fish that had taken
refuge in the Syr Darya delta have repopulated the sea. Fishermen in boats returned with
rich catches of carp, pike, flounder, pike perch, and nearly two dozen other species are
again at home in the sea.
The ecosystem has recovered quickly in this part of the Aral Sea region, as opposed
to Barsakelmes, a former island in the Aral Sea that has blended into the surrounding
desert and which we visited in 1993 as well. At that time it was still an island with kulans
and saiga antelopes. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the people on the island were
simply forgotten. One family and the National Park manager had no chance to leave.
For months, not a soul had shown up. What had become of the island, the people and
the small settlement? It was in the fall of 2011 when I had the chance to revisit the island.
It truly was a shock. I have rarely seen such a dead place in my life. Not even beetles
228 Photo essay Aral Sea