The sea bed.
The tide began to turn in 1964. The two rivers supplying the Aral lake, the Amu Darya and the Syra Darya, were pumped dry to irrigate the cotton crops, the so-called
white gold of Central Asia. After that autumn the tide never returned. The only thing the population of Muynak could see was an endlessly ebbing tide. The water
dropped by 45 centimetres a year until it completely disappeared. Nowadays the water has receded over 100 kilometres fro Muynak.