Editing Aral Sea (section)

===Biology===
The Aral Sea fishing industry, which at its peak employed some 40,000 and reportedly produced one-sixth of the Soviet Union's entire fish catch, has been devastated. In the 1980s commercial harvests were becoming unsustainable, and by 1987 commercial harvest became nonexistent. Due to the declining sea levels, salinity levels became too high for the 20 native fish species to survive. The only fish that could survive the high-salinity levels was flounder.  Also, as water has receded, former fishing towns along the original shores have become [[ship graveyard]]s.<ref name="Chen">{{cite news |last=Chen |first=Dene-Hern |date=16 March 2018 |title=Once Written Off for Dead, the Aral Sea Is Now Full of Life |url=https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/north-aral-sea-restoration-fish-kazakhstan|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180316062314/https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/north-aral-sea-restoration-fish-kazakhstan/|url-status=dead|archive-date=16 March 2018}}</ref>

[[Aral, Kazakhstan|Aral]], originally the main fishing port, is now about 15 kilometres from the sea and has seen its population decline dramatically since the beginning of the crisis.<ref>{{Cite news |url=http://www.eurasianet.org/node/71781 |title=Kazakhstan: Measuring the Northern Aral's Comeback |last=Bland |first=Stephen M. |date=27 January 2015 |work=EurasiaNet |access-date=19 September 2017}}</ref> The town of [[Moynaq]] in Uzbekistan had a thriving harbour and fishing industry that employed about 30,000 people;<ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.unicef.org/ceecis/reallives_3304.html |title= Uzbekistan: Moynaq village faces the Aral Sea disaster |publisher= [[UNICEF]] |access-date= 1 May 2010 |archive-date= 10 March 2017 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20170310014357/https://www.unicef.org/ceecis/reallives_3304.html |url-status= dead }}</ref> now it lies 30–90 kilometres from the shore. Fishing boats lie scattered on the dry dusty land that was once covered by water; many have been there for 20 years.

The South Aral Sea remains too saline to host any species other than [[halotolerant]] organisms.<ref>Aladin et al. 2018, p. 2234.</ref> The South Aral has been incapable of supporting fish since the late 1990s, when the flounder were killed by rising salinity levels.<ref name = "Ermakhanov 2012">Ermakhanov et al. 2012, p. 7.</ref>

Also destroyed is the [[muskrat]]-trapping industry in the deltas of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, which used to yield as many as 500,000 pelts a year.<ref name="winse"/>

<gallery class="center" mode="packed" heights="160px">
File:AralSeaModis.jpg|Aral Sea dust storm, March 2010
File:Aralship2.jpg|Abandoned ship near Aral, Kazakhstan
File:AralskHarbor.jpg|A former harbour in the city of Aral
File:Kazakh fisherman Aralsk.jpg|Local Kazakh fisherman harvesting the day's catch
</gallery>