A Kazakh fisherman is carried to a boat (left) in Tastubek, on the northern part of the Aral Sea. Thanks to a dam, fishing is still possible there. But in the Uzbek village of Kubla-Ustyurt ...
Once a shimmering 68,000-square-kilometer (26,000-square-mile) inland sea straddling Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, the Aral Sea was one ... remains of rusting fishing boats stranded in the sand.