The Aral sea was once home to a thriving system of lagoons and inland Archipelagos, it’s name “Aral” means Island in its original Kazakh language. It is called a sea, however it does not feed into the ocean so it is technically a lake. It is primarily fed by two rivers the Syr Darya, and the Amu Darya. The larger of the two, the Amu Darya originates from the Hindu Kush mountains in the south, a part of the Himalayas. It is fed from a system of tributaries as well. The second river, the Syr Darya originates in western China; it is the smaller of the two tributaries. Combined the two rivers keep the Aral sea from evaporating by contributing water. 



Economically speaking, the Aral sea was a fishing powerhouse. At its peak in 1957, just before the real diversion started it produced 48,000 tons of fish. Consisting of 13% of the Soviet Union's fish stocks. The Soviet Union had the world's largest coastline at the time, the Aral sea was truly punching above its weight. The sea had also been supplying water for millions of farms in the decades prior, as the Soviet Union had been using it to irrigate fields in some capacity since the 1930’s.