Scenes from the Aral Sea

Last month I wrote this post about Uzbekistan, where I mentioned what's perhaps the world's worst ecological disaster - the disappearance of the Aral Sea in Central Asia. Once one of the world's largest inland bodies of water, the Aral Sea has shrunk by almost 90% thanks in large part to its two feeder rivers being diverted to grow cotton, and other crops, in the high desert of Central Asia.

In case you're interested on what this looks like (beyond the satellite image here of the Aral Sea in 1989 and 2003), the website EnglishRussia posted a series of photos - and no, they didn't build those ships in the desert, that was once the Sea.