Aral Sea History Museum — Attraction in Muynak

Arak sea

Diversion of water from its only two inflowing rivers caused the Aral Sea to regress in surface area from 67,499 km² in 1960 to only 18,000 km². increasing salinity, the original Aral Sea had separated into a northern Small Aral and several isolated water bodies in the south, all the latter rapidly becoming hypersaline and unliveable for most metazoan life forms. Commercial fisheries, formerly an important occupation and source of food protein in the area, virtually ceased.

Soviet intentions and responsibility: “The disappearance of the lake was no surprise to the Soviets, they expected it to happen long before. As early as 1964, Aleksandr Asarin at the Hydroproject Institute pointed out that the lake was doomed, explaining, "It was part of the five-year plans, approved by the council of ministers and the Politburo. Nobody on a lower level would dare to say a word contradicting those plans, even if it was the fate of the Aral Sea.

Solutions

The UNDP, completed the ‘Green Aral Sea’ crowdfunding initiative planting 823,000...

BEWARE the rude and cheating cashier of this place. She won't say anything when you enter and then will charge you 35000 some when you leave. I don't mind paying but I don't like being cheated like that.

There's not really anything there to see beside photos you can look up in google. If you are doing a tour make sure to ask if it's included or not. It apparently was included in ours but our driver played dumb. We had to contact directly the agency to ask for a refund...

Lovely little museum. It had beautiful artwork and photos of Muynak and it’s fishing history with the Aral Sea. We even watched a documentary in the Yurt (an English version was available) that described what went wrong with the sea drying up. Would recommend going here if you have an hour to kill. Was 35,000 som for entry...