The Aral Sea Is Almost Gone

The Aral Sea fishing industry, which in its heyday had employed some 40,000 and reportedly produced one-sixth the Soviet Union's entire fish catch, has been decimated, and former fishing towns along the original shores have become ship graveyards. The town Moynaq in Uzbekistan had a thriving harbor and fishing industry that employed approximately 30,000 people ; now it lies miles from the shore. Fishing boats lie scattered on the dry land that was once covered by water; many have been there for 20 years. The only significant fishing company left in the area has its fish shipped from the Baltic Sea, thousands kilometers away.
Also destroyed is the muskrat trapping industry in the deltas Amu Darya and Syr Darya, which used to yield as much as 500,000 muskrat pelts a year.