Aral Sea: The Lake That Was Drained on Purpose

About sixty years ago, the Aral Sea was the fourth largest lake on Earth. Today the fishing boats of Moynaq sit in the sand, more than a hundred kilometers from the water. Nobody hid what was coming: Soviet planners took the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya to grow cotton in the desert, and they knew the sea would shrink. In this video: how a sea survived in the middle of a desert, the fishermen who sent their catch to the Volga famine in 1921, the canals that took the rivers away, eighteen years of NASA satellite pictures, the medieval village of Kerderi found on the dry seabed, the salty dust of the Aralkum, and the dam that brought the North Aral back to life. So... what happened? Subscribe:    / @sowhathappenedtv   Instagram:   / so.what.happenedtv   TikTok:   / so.what.happenedtv   Chapters 0:00 A boat in the desert 0:39 A sea in the desert 1:46 The fishermen 2:40 White gold 3:57 They knew 4:27 The sea walks away 5:36 The view from space 6:28 It happened before 7:28 A new desert 8:43 The comeback 10:05 What happens next 10:54 Back to Moynaq Maps, charts and drawings are simplified visualizations made for this video; the 1960 shoreline is approximate and the drawings are not to scale. SOURCES • NASA Earth Observatory, World of Change: Shrinking Aral Sea: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/wor... • Micklin (2007), The Aral Sea Disaster, Annu. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. doi:10.1146/annurev.earth.35.031306.140120 • Micklin (2016), The future Aral Sea: hope and despair, Environ. Earth Sci. doi:10.1007/s12665-016-5614-5 • Krivonogov et al. (2014), The fluctuating Aral Sea, Gondwana Research. doi:10.1016/j.gr.2013.12.012 • Boroffka et al. (2006), Archaeology and climate at the Aral Sea, Geoarchaeology. doi:10.1002/gea.20135 • Banks, Heinold & Schepanski (2022), Aral Sea desiccation and Central Asian dust, JGR Atmospheres. doi:10.1029/2022JD036618 • World Bank, Syr Darya Control and Northern Aral Sea project (Kok-Aral dam, 2005) • ILEC World Lake Database, Aral Sea: https://wldb.ilec.or.jp/itembyid/11091 • Natural Earth (1960 shoreline): https://www.naturalearthdata.com/ SATELLITE IMAGES • NASA Earth Observatory images by Terra/MODIS (public domain). • Aral Sea 2019 and 2020: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019, 2020), processed by Pierre Markuse, CC BY 2.0: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index... , https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index... • Aral Sea dust storm: NASA Goddard Photo and Video, CC BY 2.0: https://www.flickr.com/photos/2466236... PHOTOS • Arian Zwegers, CC BY 2.0: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index... , https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index... • upyernoz, CC BY 2.0: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index... and 5 photos at https://www.flickr.com/photos/4860008... • PhillipC, CC BY 2.0: https://www.flickr.com/photos/4203364... , https://www.flickr.com/photos/4203364... • Gilad Rom, CC BY 2.0: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index... , https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index... • Gert-Jan Peddemors, CC BY 2.0: https://www.flickr.com/photos/5376651... , https://www.flickr.com/photos/5376651... • abbeyman2002, CC BY 2.0: https://www.flickr.com/photos/3417911... • miketnorton, CC BY 2.0: https://www.flickr.com/photos/4966568... • Pekka Tamminen, CC BY 2.0 (cropped): https://www.flickr.com/photos/5654271... • ChanOJ, CC BY 2.5: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index... • Obakeneko, CC BY 3.0: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index... • Oleg Bkhambri (Voltmetro), CC BY 3.0: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index... • Raf24, CC BY 4.0: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index... • Ninaras, CC BY 4.0: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index... , https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index... • Ecpirolli, CC BY 4.0: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index... • Urgamal Magsar, CC BY 4.0: https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/31... • Alexander Dubynin, CC BY 4.0: https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/29... Licenses: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ (also /2.5/, /3.0/, /4.0/) Thumbnail: photo by Arian Zwegers (CC BY 2.0), cropped, with text added. MUSIC "Aftermath", "Earth Prelude", "Danse Morialta", "Industrial Cinematic", "Tempting Secrets", "Sad Trio", "Atlantean Twilight", "Truth of the Legend", "Dark Fog", "Ascending the Vale", "Healing", "Bittersweet" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... Voice: synthetic narration (Kokoro TTS). #aralsea #history #environment