SHIP'S GRAVEYARD

Climb up to the monument to the Aral Sea: a fin whose sides show its evolution from 1960 to the present day. From this height, you can take in what was once a sea. On its dried-up bottom, the new Aralkum salt desert now forms. Covering an area of over 40,000 km², it is no longer possible to see this "sea" reduced to a mere puddle, 200 km from Moynaq.

The wrecks, once scattered across this infinite desert, were all brought together and lined up in 2008 at the foot of the monument, where they punctuate the dunes with rust stains. In fact, very little remains of the fishing vessels that once plied the Aral Sea: cannibalized to shore up the roofs and fences of houses, their decomposing steel skeletons present a spectacle both tragic and poetic. The sand itself is strewn with grains of rust, gnawed pieces of sheet metal, ropes, old cans..

Descending from the monument, and crossing the town, we come to the old cannery, where everything has remained unchanged since its closure in 1993 for lack of fish. Time has stood still: machines rusted to the bone, empty cans waiting to be filled, safety instructions posted on the walls. It's as if disaster had struck only a short time ago, that the sea had suddenly receded and the production line had simply been put to sleep. A science-fiction setting... or a horror film!