Walk Among The Shipwrecks On The Bottom Of The Aral Sea

  • Thread starter Thread starter Anonymous
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Still interesting, but at the same time curious, just noticed that all the boats pictured are up right, hum!

Regards,

Ron Fisher
 
Yeah, that line of boats all pointed in the same direction looked like they might have been abandoned on what was once the shore.

I still hope to get to Mallows Bay on the Potomac one of these days.
 
I currently live in Uzbekistan where these ships are located, and have seen them first hand. They aren't actually sunken ships, but rather ships that have been left high and dry by the receding Aral Sea. The sea dried up over the course of the last 5 decades as the result of Soviet era diversion of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers for large scale cotton irrigation. Since the demise of the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan has continued the irrigation, and the southern Uzbek half of the lake looks like it's gone for good. Kazakhstan in the north has build a huge dike to wall off the northern part of the lake and try to reclame a small northern section of the Aral. The loss of the Sea has caused a huge ecologic catastrophe in the Karakalpakstan region with loss of the large fishing industry, obviously, but also large scale climate changes in the region and pollution from the agricultural runoff (and from a former Soviet biological weapons test site on what used to be an island in the Aral Sea). The whole situation is a pretty powerful inditement of the Soviet Unions dismal ecologic record (which Uzbekistan has not improved upon).

Aiviq
 
Aiviq":3af77j01 said:
I currently live in Uzbekistan where these ships are located, and have seen them first hand. They aren't actually sunken ships, but rather ships that have been left high and dry by the receding Aral Sea. The sea dried up over the course of the last 5 decades as the result of Soviet era diversion of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers for large scale cotton irrigation. Since the demise of the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan has continued the irrigation, and the southern Uzbek half of the lake looks like it's gone for good. Kazakhstan in the north has build a huge dike to wall off the northern part of the lake and try to reclame a small northern section of the Aral. The loss of the Sea has caused a huge ecologic catastrophe in the Karakalpakstan region with loss of the large fishing industry, obviously, but also large scale climate changes in the region and pollution from the agricultural runoff (and from a former Soviet biological weapons test site on what used to be an island in the Aral Sea). The whole situation is a pretty powerful inditement of the Soviet Unions dismal ecologic record (which Uzbekistan has not improved upon).

Aiviq
Click to expand...

Thanks for the update, Aiviq. Looking at the upright ships I figured there was more to this story.

H
 
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