Photos: A graveyard of ships in Moynaq, a Soviet-era port on the Aral Sea
Once a thriving port city on the Aral Sea, irrigation projects for cotton farming in the former Soviet Union turned Moynaq into a ghost town where murals and signs across the city depict what was once a thriving commercial fishing port. The city in Uzbekistan has witnessed firsthand the shrinking of the Aral Sea and the impact of one of the worst man-made ecological disasters, presenting a bizarre and surreal post-apocalyptic landscape to the few residents and tourists that walk its streets.
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Rusting fishing trawlers sit abandoned in Moynaq, Uzbekistan. Once a thriving sea port city on the Aral Sea, Moynaq is now home to only a few thousand residents. Its population has been declining since the 1980s due to the recession of the Aral Sea which has turned the harbour into a graveyard for ships and the area’s fishing industry. (Taylor Weidman / Bloomberg)
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A sign for Moynaq stands at the entrance of the city. The Aral Sea is situated in Central Asia, between the Southern part of Kazakhstan and Northern Uzbekistan. Up until the third quarter of the 20th century it was the world’s fourth largest saline lake. (Taylor Weidman / Bloomberg)
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Rusting fishing trawlers sit abandoned in Moynaq. The ecological disaster of the Aral Sea turned the fishing port into a sunbaked town that has been taken over by the desert. Fishing and canning had always been part of the region’s economy with the industry dealing in up to 60,000 tons of fish during its heydey in the 1960s. (Taylor Weidman / Bloomberg)
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But as irrigation projects for cotton farming in the Soviet Union diverted the rivers that fed the Aral Sea, the area started desiccating steadily. Today, Moynaq is a ghost town with murals and signs across the city depicting a past in stark contrast with its arid landscape. (Taylor Weidman / Bloomberg)
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