Where fish once swam, camels now tread. The shore of the Aral Sea has receded by nearly 50 miles, leaving a graveyard of rusty shipwrecks scattered across what used to be the beautiful bay of the fishing village of Zhalanash, Kazakhastan.
For decades Moscow drained both of the Aral's chief tributary rivers to irrigate huge cotton and rice fields, shrinking the sea to half its former size.