Moynaq Uzbekistan 1972 Hoodie

In the '70s, Moynaq was still a bustling fishing community with tens of thousands of residents, but a Soviet government program to grow cotton in the region would forever change Uzbekistan's only port city. In the '60s, diversion of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers sapped the endorheic Aral Sea of its inflows, causing the lake to begin drying up. The lake began to shrink, and so did the economy of Moynaq. The receding waters coupled with polluted agricultural runoff from the cotton fields turned what was left of the Aral Sea toxic, and by the year 2000, all that was left was a couple of separate lakes separated from the former port city by a newly formed Aralkum Desert. Today, the former seaport is a 150 km from the water.