The Aral Sea Cannot Recover | FameFacts Daily #aralsea #desert #shorts

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]One decision drained a sea.

[00:00:02]The Aral Sea was once one of the largest lakes on Earth, a body of water so big it had its own fishing industry, ports, and regional climate.

[00:00:11]In the 1960s, >> [music] >> Soviet planners diverted the two rivers that fed it to irrigate cotton fields, and the lake began losing water faster than any natural process could explain.

[00:00:20]Over the next five decades, >> [music] >> the Aral Sea lost more than 90% of its volume. The shoreline retreated so far that former port cities ended up stranded 150 km from the water's edge.

[00:00:31]The exposed lake bed is now the Aralkum desert, 60,000 sq km of salt and toxic sediment [music] that generates dust storms reaching as far as the Arctic.

[00:00:40]The fourth largest lake in the world was turned into a desert by a single irrigation policy. It took 50 years, and it is not coming back.