Quiet Chernobyl: The Aral Sea from Stephen Tucker on Vimeo.

First off: Just a warning that the email address at the end of the film no longer is valid. I gave up the allegromation.com domain in 2008. You may find my current contact info in the contact section.

This film was my thesis project when I graduated from Animation school. Looking back, there are a lot of things I would do differently, but hey, that's how you learn.

On a serious note, The Aral Sea is one of the worst man-made disasters of our time. At the time that this video was made (2007) it had declined to 10% of its original size, splitting into three lakes – the North Aral Sea and the eastern and western basins of the once far larger South Aral Sea. By 2009, the south-eastern lake had disappeared entirely and the south-western lake retreated to a thin strip at the extreme west of the former southern sea.

The region's once prosperous fishing industry has been virtually destroyed, bringing unemployment and economic hardship. The Aral Sea region is also heavily polluted, with consequent serious public health problems. The retreat of the sea has reportedly also caused local climate change, with summers becoming hotter and drier, and winters colder and longer.

There is now an ongoing effort in Kazakhstan to save and replenish the North Aral Sea. A dam project completed in 2005 has raised the water level of this lake by two metres. Salinity has dropped, and fish are again found in sufficient numbers for some fishing to be viable. The outlook for the remnants of the South Aral Sea remains bleak. I hope this short intro to the topic inspires you to go learn more about the sea. Of course there are many resources out there, but here is a summation I wrote on the topic while working on the film.