Aral Sea – a picture of a dying Sea.

I first heard about this in the headlines (headlines only, meaning I did not read the whole article ) in Yahoo.com. But now was the only time that I read about the Aral sea article in full.

The Aral Sea is a sea located in Central Asia; it lies between Kazakhstan in the north, and Karakalpakstan (an autonomous region of Uzbekistan) in the south. The Aral sea roughly translates as “Sea of Islands”, referring to more than 1,500 islands that once dotted its waters.

The once water-filled Aral Sea is now drying up and resembles more of a desert rather than a sea. Check out the the picture of the Aral sea before and after.

Just recently, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said that “it is clearly one of the worst environmental disasters of the world” .

The Secretary-General said the toxicity of the land and effects on the regional ecosystem was a wake-up call, Ban’s office reported.

According to Ban Ki-Moon,

“It was a vivid testament to what happens when we waste our common natural resources, when we neglect our environment, when we mismanage our environment,” he said.

He praised efforts under way by leaders in Central Asia to spearhead an international fund to save the Aral Sea, calling it a model for global leadership.

“We should become better stewards in managing the environment,” he said. “We must deliver this Planet Earth to our succeeding generations, so that they can live in a more hospitable, in a more environmentally sustainable way.”

(source: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/Resource-Wars/2010/04/05/Ban-laments-decline-of-Aral-Sea/UPI-82701270473092/)

As a result of the drying up Aral Sea, the fishing industry that once was bountiful in the region is now gone. Definitely this is not a good sign. A once thriving sea drying up? We must take action before our other precious starts to dry up too.

You can read my other Posts below:

• March 26, 2010 -- 2009 Philippine Bar Exam Topnotchers.
  After months of waiting, the Supreme Court finally released the full list of the 2009 Philippine Bar Exam passers! Of the 5,903 examinees, only 1,4...
• January 21, 2011 -- Fountain Lady: The Lady that fell on a fountain in a Mall.
  [ad#ad-on-post-large-rec-blue] [ad#adlink_box-on-post]It seems like this is the first viral video spreading all over the internet this 2011. In th...
• October 28, 2010 -- Cellphone caught on a 1928 Charlie Chaplin Film?
  We all know that cellphones or mobile phones are a recent invention - being invented in the 1970s and commercially used in 1990s. So how did this woma...
• April 3, 2010 -- The Facebook status that got a student expelled.
  We are living in a very small world today, thanks to technology, and more specifically, the internet. Social sites like Facebook, is a very good to...
• April 10, 2010 -- Classic Pixel Game characters invade New York!
  Now in the lighter side of things, did you ever imagine game characters coming to life in the real world? What would you think about when a giant Pacm...