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The Soviet engineers apparently assumed it
was only a temporary change. Only a nar-
row canal was left allowing a small amount
of water to pass, thanks to which the water
in the Kara Bogaz Gulf was expected to last
a further 25 years. Much to everyone’s sur-
prise the gulf dried up 10 times faster than
had been forecast by the Institute of Hy-
draulic Affairs and by autumn 1983 it was all
over. The pink flamingos died in droves, the
little brine shrimp on which they fed having
disappeared. The lagoon turned into a vast
desert covered with a 50-centimetre layer of
precipitated salt, which was picked up by the
wind and blown for hundreds of kilometres,
as far as the Chernoziem (fertile soil) area
of Russia, raising the salt content of the soil.
With the closure of the strait, the gulf also stopped
acting as a natural hydrological regulation system
(keeping the salt content at a relatively low level).
The ensuing increase in the salt content of the
southern part of the Caspian, to levels exceeding
15 grams per litre, had disastrous consequences
for the sturgeon population. In the spring of 1992,
in view of the scale of the disaster, Turkmenistan,
which had just declared its independence, decided
to recover the Kara Bogaz Gulf from the desert. It
therefore destroyed the dyke, restoring the connec-
tion between the sea and the gulf.
In the meantime closing the gulf had resulted in
the collapse of the salt industry. The area around
the Kara Bogaz nevertheless remains the world’s
biggest source of the raw material for the chemi-
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