How to Catch Fish When There Is No Water: Post-Soviet Efforts to Revive Fishing in the Aral Sea

• In Event: Soviet and Post-Soviet Histories of Fishing: Environments and Knowledge between the Local and Global

Abstract

This paper examines post-Soviet efforts to revive the fishing industry around Central Asia’s Aral Sea. This industry had largely collapsed as a result of the Aral Sea’s disappearance in the late Soviet era. But in the post-Soviet period on the Kazakhstani side of the sea, a group of activists, as well as a Danish NGO, succeeded in partially rehabilitating fishing. Flounder, a salt-tolerant species of fish first introduced during the late Soviet era, proved critical to their efforts. In 2005, the fishing industry received another boost when the World Bank constructed a dam on the Kazakhstani side, “bringing back” a portion of the sea. The Uzbekistani side of the sea, by contrast, continued its decline. This paper asks why we see two such different outcomes on the Kazakhstani and Uzbekistani sides of the sea. It also examines why Kazakhstani activists chose to focus on supporting fishing when there were alternate activities, like camel breeding on the dried-up seabed, that might have provided employment for the region.

Author

• Sarah Cameron, U of Maryland, College Park