Caspian Sea kara bogaz goal. The phenomenon of the Caspian - Aral system. Studies of the pre-revolutionary period

Kara-Bugaz

In a nutshell: During the retreat from Novorossiysk in 1920, prisoners of the White Guard counterintelligence were landed on an uninhabited island in the Caspian Sea, where they must die of hunger and thirst. Four - the Bolsheviks Miller, Zanosha, Nesterova and the scientist Shatsky manage to escape.

The Kara-Bugaz Bay began to be explored relatively recently. In 1847, Lieutenant Zherebtsov first described the nature of the bay. “The air in these places is filled with the finest salty dust... The blue sea water has been replaced by the dead and gray water of the bay... The water is not very transparent. Dead fish swim in it, brought from the sea ... There is no grass, no trees. Along the eastern coast are dreary mountains, while the southern coast is low and covered with many salt lakes. All the shores are deserted and have no fresh water... The water in the bay has extreme salinity and density, which is why the impact of the waves is much more crushing than in the sea... According to the stories of the Turkmen, it does not rain in the bay. The soil in the bay is very remarkable: salt, and under it is calcareous clay. Salt is special, not of the composition that ordinary, used for food ... Staying, even for a short time, in the waters of the bay gives rise to a feeling of great loneliness and longing for flourishing and populated places. On all the shores of the bay, for hundreds of miles ... not a single person was met ... "

Lieutenant Zherebtsov prepares a report to the government in which he calls the Kara-Bugaz Bay "harmful" (dries up the Caspian Sea, there are a lot of dead fish in it) and proposes "to stop its existence and turn it into a lake, blocking the narrow strait with a dam." He goes for advice to the famous traveler Karelin in the town of Guryev. Karelin, who, having crossed the shores of Kara-Bugaz shortly before Zherebtsov and testified that “there are no coasts on the Caspian Sea that are so decisively and in every respect unsuitable,” unexpectedly dissuades Zherebtsov from his “crazy idea”. Karelin explains that Kara-Bugaz salt is nothing but mirabilite, from which Glauber's salt is extracted, which is widely used in glass production. According to Karelin, Kara-Bugaz is the world's largest natural deposit of Glauber's salt, so the bay should not be destroyed in any case. Zherebtsov tears up his project and throws it into the sea.

In his old age, Zherebtsov lived for a long time in the suburbs. The writer Yevseenko visits him, who, based on the stories of the old sailor, writes short stories. One of them, "The Fatal Mistake", is dedicated to Zherebtsov's journey to Kara-Bugaz. In it, Zherebtsov admits that the manufacturer Katyk "corrected" a mistake made by Zherebtsov in his youth (i.e., that the lieutenant recognized the bay as unsuitable for use). Katyk began to develop the field. “I established a joint-stock company for this, turned everyone around; salt does not export, and Kara-Bugaz received from the government almost in full possession.

For the holidays, the son of his deceased school friend, “a boy with a silver tube in his throat” comes to Zherebtsov (at that time, a throat incision was made for patients with diphtheria, and then a silver tube was inserted into the incision so that the operated person could talk). Zherebtsov willingly tells the boy about his voyages for a long time, and the boy listens attentively and asks about the details.

Many years after Zherebtsov's death, Nikolai Remizov (a boy with a silver throat) became the first meteorologist who agreed to spend the winter at the Kara-Bugaz meteorological station. In January 1920, the old steamship Nikolai, captured by the White Guards, entered the bay. In the holds of the ship, more than a hundred Bolsheviks are being taken to their deaths. There is thirty centimeters of water in the holds. The captain receives an order to go to Kara-Bugaz. He tries to explain that swimming in the bay in winter is impossible (mirabilite is deposited only in cold water, so the water of the bay can corrode the iron bottom of the ship in a very short period of time), that there are no lights, but there are many reefs, hitting which the ship will sink. However, Denikin's officer orders to go "to the desert sea." There is a deserted island teeming with snakes. No steamboat will be able to land on the island, since there are no anchorages there. The officer orders the boats to be ready to throw the prisoners ashore.

The sea is stormy, people in the holds are thrown from side to side, everyone suffers from seasickness. Among the prisoners is the geologist Shatsky, who was caught by chance (he was suspected of espionage). Shatsky led an expedition to determine the possibilities of extracting fresh water in the Kara-Bugaz region. He determined that stone placers are natural condensers of vapors from the air, which quickly cool down at night. Stones absorb moisture, pass it down and store it under their layers. In Petrovsk, Shatsky was arrested. Among others, he was taken three times to be shot, but each time he remained among the lucky ones who did not fall. After the third "execution" Shatsky turned gray. During the tragic voyage in the hold of the ship, Shatsky meets Miller, an Estonian, a convinced Bolshevik, still a young man who impresses his older comrades with endurance, courage, and intransigence. Even Denikin's followers respect him.

The White Guards land prisoners on the island without food or water. Ten people on the ship died of typhus, and the corpses floated in the water next to the living. Almost all the survivors are sick. Twenty more people die on the island during the night. Three students are trying to swim across the narrow strait that separates the island from the mainland. They stagger and stir, they drown near the shore. Miller takes the lead in the actions of the de facto doomed people. He orders that fires be lit (you can warm yourself by the fire, and besides, the smoke can be noticed from the mainland and come to the rescue). Miller orders to suck on pebbles at night, because, according to Shatskoko, moisture condenses on them. Five days pass. Only fifteen remain alive. The Kirghiz notice the fire from the shore and let Remizov know. He embarks, accompanied by one of the local Kirghiz and his friend, the watchman Aryanets, by swimming in a boat along the stormy strait to the island. Remizov saves the survivors, and takes Miller, Shatsky and the Armenian teacher to his place. Shatsky went crazy. Although he is only thirty-two years old, he has the face of an old man. Shatsky has incessant delirium, it seems to him that the Americans have found a way to unleash the psychic energy that lies in the geological layers, turn it into evil and, with its help, plan to wipe the Soviet state from the face of the Earth. Shatsky strives to report his "discovery" to the Council of People's Commissars as soon as possible.

The narrator, together with the geologist Prokofiev, is considering how to organize an expedition to Kara-Bugaz. A trust is being built there, an enterprise for the processing of mirabilite. Good advice is given to the narrator by engineer Khorobrikh, a great connoisseur of these places, a brave and very experienced person. Prokofiev also shares his travel experience in the Kara-Bugaz region, even giving the narrator a short artistic essay on the customs of the local population. The essay says that when Prokofiev first arrived in Kara-Bugaz, he settled in the wagon of the widow Nachar, an Afghan woman. After some time, Prokofiev learned that Nachar had been stolen from his parents as a child and sold to the poor Murad, who, upon reaching Nachar's fifteen years of age, married her. The first year she had no children, her husband severely beat her for this. Then a boy was born, which was a good omen, and Nachar's life became easier. Then a girl was born, but her husband died, and according to Sharia law, all the sheep were taken away from the widow, actually dooming her to starvation. Then Nachar's daughter was stolen, and the boys began to throw manure at the woman. When Nachar tries to ask the neighbors about her daughter's fate, the men start beating her. Nachar goes to the Bolsheviks to intercede for her, but the old men catch up with her, beat her and bring her back, threatening to kill her. Nachar decides to run away with his son, asks Prokofiev to help her. The expedition leaves, takes Nachar with him, moves to another place, however, while Prokofiev has to use force, because the local residents, teriakeshi, who work for Prokofiev, refuse to help the widow. Prokofiev brings Nachar to Krasnovodsk, reports the head of the women's department. Baril. She arranges Nachar as a seamstress, draws up a statement of claim in court. Some time later, Prokofiev appears in court as a witness for the prosecution against the old men who beat Nachar. None of the defendants repent of their deeds, considering what happened in the order of things. They receive a term of imprisonment in accordance with the law.

Today we will visit a country that ranks fourth in the world after Russia, Iran and Qatar in terms of explored reserves and production of natural gas. Welcome to Turkmenistan.

In the previous post, we got to the very border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, covering 335 kilometers from Aktau, a quarter of which is actually off the road.

The Temir-baba customs post is not overloaded with transport, since there is practically no official trade between the two states. Customs is dominated by crowds of shuttle traders dragging expensive or scarce consumer goods into the closed state. Conveniences, respectively, shuttle, without frills. Our expedition was led by a forewarned Kazakh customs officer in a cozy pajama uniform.

It took about five hours to complete the paperwork, unload all things from the cars, go through scanners and load all the belongings back. Surprisingly, with the enviable possibilities of the Turkmen state, at the border all the papers and passport data were filled in manually. There was time to study the monumentality of the surrounding closets.

Tired but satisfied with the entry stamps on the most difficult visa to get, we expected to see the legendary Turkmen asphalt roads. It was not there, civilization had not yet reached here, and we had to drive the next 40 kilometers, not only off-road, but along directions.

For a change, everyone rode on their own track. All together they did not miss only one large puddle, which was encountered for the first time since leaving Astrakhan, and frolic a little in it.

The nearest settlement on the map is the city of Karabogaz - the former industrial village of Bekdash, where valuable types of chemical raw materials were mined in large quantities in Soviet times: sodium sulfate, Glauber's salt, etc. The appointment was easily explained by its location - in the richest natural "chemical pantry" of Turkmenistan - on the shores of the Kara-Bogaz-Gol bay.

Garabogazköl - literally "lake of the black strait". During the shallowing of the Caspian, the bay turned into a lake, separated from the sea by a narrow sandy spit.

During a storm, salty waves bring new portions of salts and minerals into the lake. Due to the high evaporation rate, the area of ​​the water mirror varies greatly from season to season, and the only channel of constant communication with the sea is artificially dug - in the dry season, no more than two hundred meters long.

The salinity of Kara-Bogaz-Gol is of a completely different type than the salinity of the Caspian Sea, and reached 310 ‰ in the early 1980s. The local fauna is very scarce, so on the shore there is not the usual sea shell rock, but ancient deposits of fossilized mollusks.

Sasha caught the rays of the sun, rapidly setting beyond the territory of Azerbaijan, on the other side of the Caspian Sea.

And it's time for us.

Here, behind the hill, the long-awaited, all in patches, but asphalt road will begin.

At the entrance to the tourist resort of Avaza, forty kilometers away, a powerful searchlight shone in our faces. Only after half an hour of driving, squinting more and more, we saw the outlines of the Oil Refinery. This is how Turkmen gas burns.

We drove into Avaza late at night and immediately went to check into a hotel. The accompanying lampposts throughout the city made us look at each other in surprise.

The hotel from the threshold shocked with its level and scope. In the interior - notes of oriental luxury.

Let's look into the room sergeydolya little more than a hundred dollars a day.

Turkmen carpets - in every bedroom. A "shop for a masseuse" is properly called recamier.

And an office for writing posts in four hands. True, the Internet here, according to the hostess at the reception, "temporarily does not work."

Let's go down to the lobby. Turkmenistan has a mobile operator Altyn Asyr. It translates as "Golden Age". In the elevator, the reception is excellent, though the Internet icon on the phone has never been lit in the country.

You can clearly see the interiors of some five-star hotel in Dubai, which, apparently, inspired the architects.

Here they are, Turkmen roads, about which there were legends: perfect surface, clear signs, anti-dazzle lights and gentle, beveled curbs that do not break discs. And instead of advertising - interactive patriotic screens and clocks with temperature.

The city gave the impression of being completely empty, and we actually felt like the only tourists here. But later, after talking with a local resident ashkhabadka came to the conclusion that in the season the hotel occupancy is almost complete. There are attendants, but in small numbers - for example, watering plants is fully automated.

Avaza continues to be actively built. Hotels are mainly built by masters of monolithic construction from Turkey with state Turkmen money. And after the commissioning, the hotel is transferred to the management of any ministry, department or large enterprise.

The idea of ​​President Gurbanguly Myalikgulyevich Berdimuhamedov impresses with its scale. Orders have already been given to build a water park with an entertainment center, an oceanarium, a karting center for mini-motorsports, a golf center, supermarkets, a cycle track, a dolphinarium, a planetarium, a cinema, an amusement park and a Congress Center on the Avazinsky seaside.

It is worth imagining that back in 2008 there was a steppe desert here, and two years later a seawater desalination plant and a gas turbine power plant with a capacity of 254 megawatts and a new international airport were put into operation.

Part of the places in hotels is distributed among employees of state organizations on vouchers, and in the future it is planned to make a resort of international scale here.

In the summer of 2012, family holidays became possible on Avaza, a complex of cottages "Shapak" and "Yupek Yoly" and the yacht club "Yelken" were opened.

By the autumn of 2010, sea geysers up to 100 meters high and a park ensemble of interactive fountains, as well as leisure facilities and an amphitheater for mass celebrations, decorated the Avaza embankment.

Jennifer Lopez, Mustafa Sandal, Nancy Ajram, Ziynet Sali and even Philip Kirkorov spoke at the opening of new facilities on Avaza. :)

Today, 26 hotels out of the planned 60 have been built. Already, the resort is ready to receive up to 8,000 people a day, despite the fact that all entry visas to Turkmenistan are issued only 15,000 a year, most of which are for diplomatic tasks. Artificial channels are dug through the territory of the former desert, and all embankments are provided with all conditions for comfortable walks.

But the President said. And Turkmenistan is being built.

In the next post - the city of Turkmenbashi and Turkmenistan, still unaffected by global construction projects.

Yes, no goodbye!

Expedition partners:

On a satellite image:
1. Delta of the Volga River
2. Caspian Sea
3. Kara-Bogaz-Gol Bay
4. Remains of the former Aral Sea
5. Sarakamysh lake

The photo can be enlarged significantly with the mouse wheel while holding down the Ctrl key

CASPIAN SEA

The Caspian Sea has become catastrophically shallow and this trend will continue to increase in the future. Such a pessimistic forecast was made by prominent scientists at the beginning of the last century.
The water level in the largest drainless lake-sea on Earth had dropped by three meters by 1977. The size of the coastal islands increased, the bays and inlets became shallow or completely disappeared, the conditions for navigation in the mouths of the Volga and Ural rivers became more complicated. The shallowing of the sea threatened to reduce fish catches, especially sturgeon, whose stocks in the Caspian accounted for about 90% of the world's.
From the tragedy of the ancient sea, the population learned to benefit for themselves. The builders were able to mine the exposed deposits of shell rock, livestock breeders got additional pastures and hayfields, oil workers got the opportunity to search for and extract oil on land, and the sandy strips of the receded sea gave wonderful beaches to coastal cities.

The drop in the level of the Caspian Sea was associated with the rapid development of irrigated agriculture in the Volga region, which began to deplete the waters of the Volga. According to the plans of the Ministry of Land Reclamation and Water Resources, it was required to take about six cubic kilometers of Volga water from the river for irrigation. The flow of the great Russian river into the sea has decreased.

The question arose about drastic measures to save the Caspian Sea, the greatest miracle of nature. Various high authorities decided to block the narrow (up to 200 meters) Kara-Bogaz-Gol Strait connecting the Caspian Sea with the Kara-Bogaz-Gol Bay, which evaporated about six cubic kilometers of Caspian water from its surface per year.
Thus, according to the plan of the Ministry of Land Reclamation and Water Resources of the USSR, the damming of the strait made it possible to compensate for the withdrawal of water for irrigation from the Volga.

In 1980, a dam between the Caspian Sea and the Gulf was built in record time, without an examination and weighing the consequences. The inevitable change in the ecological situation, the deterioration of the living conditions of thousands of people living in the bay area, was not taken into account at all.
The age-old process of absorption of the waters of the sea by the Kara-Bogaz was interrupted.

In the meantime, alarming signals about the onset of the sea began to arrive, which was not such a surprise for specialists. Since 1978, all hydrometeorological observatories along the coast have recorded a sharp rise in the level of the Caspian Sea. An absurd situation was created when, in the quiet of offices, measures were being developed to save the sea from shallowing, and heroic efforts were made on the ground to protect against sea waves that flooded hay meadows, haystacks, equipment, livestock camps, search sites for oil producers and developed deposits.
The sea, having increased by almost two annual flows of the Volga, has risen by more than a meter. Sea level rise has created a serious threat to many coastal structures, and in Dagestan, for example, an entire state farm was flooded - 40 thousand hectares of land.

Experts suddenly saw the light, concluded that the sea level pulsates up to 4 meters with a historically verified periodicity depending on tectonic processes in the bowels of the earth's crust, and came to the conclusion that the Caspian does not need additional sources of water, which will soon be in excess.

BAY KARA-BOGAZ-GOL

The Kara-Bogaz-Gol Bay was a unique natural object, a stable ecological system formed by nature for thousands of years and the richest raw material base for many industries. Valuable raw materials are extracted from underground brines - boron, bromine, rare earth elements. Industry produces bischofite, sodium sulfate, epsomite, medical Glauber's salt and other chemical products from brines. Here is the world's largest mirabilite deposit.

Under the pretext of saving the Caspian Sea in 1980, the bay was blocked without ceremony by a dam. Meliorators predicted the drying up of Kara-Bogaz-Gol not earlier than in fifteen years. But the water evaporated five times faster. A lifeless salt desert, where waves saturated with chemicals once rolled like heavy waves - that's all that was left of Kara-Bogaz by this time.

When the bay dried up, industrial wells stopped feeding, underground brines became depleted in chemical elements, and the costs of mining enterprises for production increased sharply.
The living conditions of the population became even more severe. Fine salt from the bottom of the former reservoir, raised by the winds, envelops the settlements with a white haze. Salt penetrates into houses, sits on crops and poor pastures of livestock farms, leading to loss of livestock. There were rumors about the closure of mining enterprises.

Correcting a mistake of this magnitude is difficult. Eleven pipes of one and a half meters in diameter were passed through the dam. About a third of the former volume of water enters the bay through these pipes. But that doesn't solve the problem. The surface brine of the bay recovers extremely slowly. Its complete loss threatens multibillion-dollar losses for the state.

The process of dying of the bay has gone so far that it is hardly permissible to change it by the complete destruction of the dam. A new ecological system has already begun to emerge in the bay area. It is difficult to predict what consequences the next human intervention in the "management" of natural processes will lead to, when ecological shifts in the region are so obvious.

Academicians and corresponding members of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, who essentially started all this mess with the sensational "project of the century", started a scientific dispute among themselves about the correctness of forecasts for the extinction of the Caspian Sea or the complete unsuitability of this forecasting technique. But the true picture of hydrological and hydrochemical changes, the biological productivity of the sea is only at the stage of collecting information.

The problem can be solved by a special water control facility at the entrance of the channel to the bay. However, as soon as it became clear that Kara-Boga-Gol did not interfere with the intake of water from the Volga for irrigation, the USSR Ministry of Land Reclamation and Water Resources lost all interest in it, and the USSR Ministry of Chemical Industry did not consider it its duty to save the bay.

While the authorities are deciding who should design a water control device, who should build it and with what money, Kara-Bogaz-Gol is inexorably moving towards its end.

Presentation of the materials of the newspaper "Trud" for 1988 from the archives of the author.

Reviews

The shallowing of the sea threatened with a decrease in fish catches, especially sturgeon, whose stocks in the Caspian amounted to about 90% of the world........

Alexander, while working at the USSR Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Ecology, I participated in commissions on the problems of the Caspian and Aral Seas and on Kara-Boga-Gol in particular.

The decrease in fish catches was not associated with sea level, but with the construction of a hydroelectric power station on the Volga, which blocked migration routes for spawning, and fish passage facilities turned out to be ineffective. us the main stock of sturgeon and now Iran's main supplier of black caviar to the world market.

"The shallowing of the sea threatened to reduce fish catches, especially sturgeon, whose stocks in the Caspian were about 90% of the world's." (Drama Kara-Bogaz-Gol)

It will be interesting to get acquainted with one of the academic destroyers of the Caspian Sea and Kara-Bogaz! It is good that you did not take part in the turn of the northern rivers! Otherwise, the Siberians would be sitting now on the Ob-Irtysh bottom!

As for the connection between the decrease in fish catches and the shallowing of the Caspian Sea, then trace, for example, the fate of the Aral Sea. There are no fish there now!

You have a very peculiar understanding of what you read. By the way, I also participated in writing a negative conclusion from the Academy of Sciences on the project of transferring the northern rivers.

Firstly, the Caspian did not become shallow like the Aral, and did not change the salinity of the water. So it’s not worth talking about what you don’t know about. The Aral lost its freshwater fauna and flora, and another ecosystem formed in the part that remained.

What "another ecosystem has been formed" instead of the Aral Sea is well known to everyone, including you - this is Aral-Kum.
The global disaster of the great lake is briefly described by me in the story "Aral Robinson". Space photographs of the death of the Aral Sea are also placed there. You can’t call it an ecosystem, comrade academician! This is a catastrophe!

Exactly the same fate was prepared by the scientists of the USSR Academy of Sciences for the Kara-Bogaz-Gol Bay. It is good that the dam was liquidated.

As for the decline in catches of Caspian sturgeons, you are absolutely right here. One of the main limiting factors is the construction of the Volgograd hydroelectric power station, which has violated the habitat and habitual habitat of the sturgeon. It has become almost impossible for fish to return from spawning back to the Caspian Sea.

Man's insane invasion of nature continues...

A large "pocket" is striking - a bay of a semicircular shape, deeply protruding into the land in the northwestern part of Turkmenistan. If the scale is small, then it will seem like an ordinary bay, but on the ground or on a detailed map and aerial photography, its main feature is immediately visible: the lagoon is almost tightly separated from the sea by a wide strip of sand - overflow. Cutting dunes, lime and salt deposits, a unique “sea river” makes its way through the hot desert - the Kara-Bogaz-Gol Strait (Turk, “black throat”), approx. 10 km and a width of approx. 200 m. Due to the significant difference in the water level in the Caspian Sea and in the bay - about 4.5 m - water flows at a high speed - from 1 to 3 m / s. Not understanding the nature of this phenomenon (where all this water then goes), at one time people believed that an underwater river originates at the bottom of the bay, flowing in an unknown direction ...
in the Kara-Bogaz-Gol region, it reaches 32 m below the level of the World Ocean, and the level of the Caspian Sea now fluctuates around -26.7 m, and fluctuations in the level of this large salt lake-sea can be very significant: judging by archaeological research, up to 15 m over the last 3 thousand years. Once upon a time, at a higher level of the Caspian, there was no barrier between the sea and the bay at all, and they lived in a single hydrological regime; however, over the past 2-3 thousand years in the western part of Turkmenistan there have been many dramatic changes in the landscape: the level of the Caspian Sea has dropped, the water has left the old channel of the Uzboy, a desert has formed in place of the steppe, ancient cities have turned into ruins, oases are covered with sand ...
When the Russian Empire began its military expansion into Central Asia in the 1860s, the government, a little ahead of the military, sent reconnaissance expeditions to map and assess the potential significance of new territories and their resources. Thus, the kingdom of Khiva (which included the territory of the modern Balkan velayat) finally fell and came under the Russian protectorate in 1873, and already in 1875, Branobel (the company of the Nobel brothers) began to pump oil from the Nebitdag fields. As for Kara-Bogaz-Gol, it was very difficult for an ignorant person to understand the enormous value of this richest “chemical pantry” at first glance at these barren shores and muddy whitish water. Rapa (salt water of the lagoon) corroded the skin and, according to rumors, even dissolved the iron nails on the bottom of the ships; in the bay, the fish brought by the fast current immediately died. Everywhere in the air hung the smallest salt dust, penetrating into all the cracks, under the loosely closed lids of the containers and turning fresh water into bitter-salty. Wet salt fumes caused suffocation, the landscape evoked despondency, everything around seemed alien, gloomy and hostile. As a result, the first report concluded that this bay is absolutely useless for Russia and that it could harm the fisheries of the Caspian.
A large shallow rounded lagoon in the west is separated from the sea by the Karabogaz barrage (a desert isthmus of two spits), cut through by a narrow long strait. The north coast is steep and precipitous and consists of saline clay and white gypsum. There is no grass or trees. Along the eastern coast are dreary mountains, while the southern coast is low and covered with many salt lakes. All the shores are deserted and have no fresh water. I have not found a single stream that would flow into this truly dead sea ...
There were no pitfalls, no reefs, no islands on the way of the corvette. (From the report of the first explorer of Kara-Bogaz-Gol - Russian hydrographer and cartographer I.A. Zherebtsov, 1847).
The "Insatiable Mouth" greedily sucks tons and tons of Caspian water, so that they evaporate under the scorching sun in a dead, muddy, silver-gray, oversaturated salt lagoon. At the bottom - a thickness of salt deposits, on the coast - huge shafts of mirabilite from blocks thrown out by storms in cold winters. Salt dust hangs in the whitish sky.
For the first time on the Russian map compiled for Peter I in 1715 by A. Bekovich-Cherkassky during the ill-fated expedition to India, the bay was marked as the Karabugaz Sea, and at the entrance to the bay the Black Neck was marked - Karabugaz. The first Russian who dared to enter the ominous "Black Throat" on a rowboat and told about blocks of valuable Glauber's salt was the famous traveler, geographer and naturalist G.S. Karelin, who worked in the Caspian Sea in 1832, 1834 and 1836. And Lieutenant I.A. Zherebtsov - a sailor, hydrographer and cartographer - was the first to make a detailed report to the government in 1847, including a description of the flora, fauna, soundings of the bottom and a map of the Kara-Bogaz-Gol coastline. In order to find out the influence of Kara-Bogaz-Gol on the regime of the Caspian Sea and its fisheries, in 1894 and 1897. expeditions were organized (geologist N.I. Andrusov, hydrologist Spindler, zoologist Ostroumov, chemist Lebedintsev), which confirmed the presence of sodium sulfate layers at the bottom of the lagoon. The Karabogaz sodium sulfate deposit is the largest in the world. Bischofite, epsomite, etc. are also extracted from the Karabogaz solution, which is oversaturated with salts. Laboratory studies have shown that, relatively speaking, the entire periodic table is dissolved in the local brine.
The ecosystem of the bay and the entire southeastern water area of ​​the Caspian Sea in the 1980s. almost died as a result of the implementation of a project that did not pass the examination, from which he tried to warn back in 1932 in his story “Kara-Bogaz” K.G. did not make a terrible mistake by proposing in the report to the Russian government a "crazy idea" - to block the Kara-Bogaz-Gol with a dam (!) which at first seemed to him absolutely useless, even harmful. But then, through the mouth of an old hydrograph, the writer intelligibly explains that by such bay, in one fell swoop, it would be possible to destroy the richest natural "chemical pantry" of Glauber's salt and masses of other rare and valuable elements that have been deposited for centuries at the bottom of this bay.
While working on Kara-Bogaz, young Konstantin Paustovsky proved himself to be a meticulous researcher: he used authentic documents, verified facts and unverified, but true memories and stories of local residents, local legends and traditions as the basis for the plot. So, in the story two little-known popular names of the lagoon are mentioned: the Bitter Sea (Arzhi-Darya) and the Servant of the Sea (Kula-Darya). The bay really serves the sea faithfully: annually absorbing up to 20-25 km 3 of salt water, it acts as a kind of desalination plant for the Caspian Sea, a humidity regulator for a large region and the most productive natural evaporator of sea salt when evaporating huge volumes of water in a hot desert.
... But when, by 1978, the level of the Caspian Sea dropped to a record high of 29 m below sea level, the panic of business executives and the calls of unfortunate environmentalists to "save the Caspian" pushed the government to hastily erect a blind concrete dam in 1980, so as not to give it away "for nothing" tons of sea water. It was supposed to complete the water control structures over time, it was believed that the water in the bay would begin to evaporate in 25 years, everyone was sure that mirabilite reserves would not go anywhere ... As a result, an ecological disaster occurred. Holes punched in the dam for 11 pipes did not help, and in 1992 the dam was blown up. The ecosystem is slowly recovering.

general information

A shallow and very salty lagoon connected to the Caspian Sea by a long narrow strait.
Location: East coast of the Caspian Sea in the northwestern part of Turkmenistan.
washes the territories: Turkmenistan, Western economic region, .
Settlements: Bekdash.
Nearest major cities: Aktau, Izberbash, Kaspiysk.

1980 - the bay was fenced off from the Caspian Sea by a deaf dam.
1984 - 11 pipes were laid through the dam.

1992 - dam blown up.

Numbers

Area of ​​the bay before construction and after the explosion of the dam: OK. 18 thousand km 2.

The area of ​​the bay after the construction of a blind dam: 6 thousand km 2.

Bay length: varies greatly depending on the level of the Caspian Sea.
The predominant depth of the bay: 4-7 m, after the construction of the dam, it became shallow to 0-50 cm.
Gulf water level: OK. -32 m from sea level.

Level of the Caspian: varies greatly from 25.2 m below sea level to 29 m below sea level, averaging ca. 27.5 m below sea level.

Water level difference: OK. 4.5 m

Average annual outflow of water from the Caspian to the bay: OK. 20-25 km 3 .
Evaporation: not less than 6 km3 of Caspian water per year.

Salinity: supersaturated brine (reached 310%o in the early 1980s).

Transparency: up to 3 m.

Strait of Kara-Bogaz-Gol: length approx. 10 km, width approx. 200 m
The speed of the current in the strait: 1 to 3 m/s.

Climate and weather

Sharply continental, arid (desert), strong winds, salt storms (a consequence of violation of the ecological balance).

Hot summers, rather cold winters.

Average water temperature at depth: -6°C.
Surface water temperature in summer: up to +35°С.
Surface water temperature in winter: below 0°C.

Average air temperature in January: up to -4°С.
Average air temperature in July: +30°С.
Maximum temperatures: up to +48°С, minimum - up to -31°С.

Average annual rainfall: from 70 to 100 mm (as a rule, raindrops do not reach the ground - they evaporate from the heat on the fly).
Average annual evaporation: up to 1400-1500 mm.

Economy

Minerals: mirabilite (Glauber's salt) - the world's largest deposit. Valuable raw materials are extracted from underground brines - boron, bromine, rare earth elements.

Industry: mining and processing (chemical plant "Karabogaz-sulphate" in the city of Bekdash).

Attractions

Strait of Kara-Bogaz-Gol- the only sea river of its kind, about 10 km long, flowing from the Caspian Sea to the bay through the dune sands of the desert.

A ridge of calcareous-saline deposits formed a two-meter waterfall in the channel.

Bay Kara-Bogaz-Gol- an attraction in itself, an ecosystem with unique features.

Curious facts

Water rich in sodium sulfate from the spring in 1626 helped the chemist I.R. Glauber to recover from typhus, so he investigated its composition and called the salt miraculous (mirabilite - from Latin "mirabilis"). Glauber's salt is of great importance in industry and medicine.

In the 1980s the authorities of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan were pushing through in Moscow a project to transfer the Siberian and northern rivers of Russia (Ishim, Tobol, Irtysh, Pechora and Vychegda) to the south in order to “save” the Caspian and the Aral Sea. It was about a canal 700 km long, even preparatory earthworks began. The Kara-Bogaz-Gol disaster, in a certain sense, helped to stop this “project of the century”.

After the construction of the dam, three years later, the area of ​​the bay was reduced by a factor of three, the depth did not reach even 50 cm, the volume of brines decreased by a factor of 10, mirabilite sedimentation stopped, and halite began to accumulate. Soon Kara-Bogaz-Gol turned into a white salt desert, salt storms polluted the soil and water for hundreds of kilometers, and the death of sheep began.

At the end of the 19th century, when the waters of the bay were not yet so salty, Spindler and other researchers observed red streaks of foam in the bay from the accumulation of eggs of local crustaceans. Fish and young seals ate crustaceans, there were also a lot of birds: wild geese, pelicans and even pink flamingos.
As the salinity of the water increased, the crustaceans and those who fed on them disappeared. Fish, penetrating into the bay from the sea, die. Of the organic world, there are now only bacteria and a few species of algae.

On the approach to the bay from afar one can see above the sands "a dome of crimson haze, like the smoke of a quiet fire burning over the desert." The Turkmens say that it is “smoking Kara-Bogaz” (a natural phenomenon described in the story “Kara-Bogaz”).

On the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea, in the western part of Turkmenistan. It is a vast shallow lagoon that communicates with the sea through the narrow strait of the same name up to 9 km long, up to 800 m wide and 3-4 m deep. The bay serves as a natural giant evaporator of sea water, its surface area, water volume and depth vary significantly depending on the water balance and the level of the Caspian Sea.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the sea level was 0.5 m higher than in the bay, the water level in the bay relative to the level of the World Ocean was at around - 26.5 m (area 18 thousand km 2, volume 130 km 3, depth up to 10 m). Every year, from 18 to 25 km 3 of Caspian water entered the bay, bringing 330-380 million tons of salts per year. Salinity reached 270-290‰. With the established water-salt balance, as a result of intensive evaporation, billions of tons of salts have accumulated in the bay, and it has become possible to carry out their industrial extraction. Since the 1930s, there has been a decrease in the level of the Caspian Sea, and a gradual drying of the bay began. By the end of the 1970s, the inflow decreased to 5-7 km 3 per year, the level dropped to -32 m (area 12 thousand km 2, volume 20-22 km 3), salinity exceeded 300‰.

In March 1980, in order to reduce the flow of Caspian waters, the strait was blocked by a solid dam, the flow into the bay completely stopped, which caused its rapid drying. By the end of 1983, the area was reduced to 1000 km 2, volume - to 0.2 km 3, depth - to 0.1-0.3 m, salinity increased to 380‰. In 1984, the bay almost dried up. The wind carried salt dust over the surrounding areas, leading to soil salinization, destroying the fragile ecological balance of the area.

Since the beginning of the 1980s, the level of the Caspian Sea has been rising, which made it possible in September 1984 to build a culvert in the dam and resume the supply of Caspian water to Kara-Bogaz-Gol in a limited volume: 1.5-1.6 km 3 per year. In June 1992, the dam was completely liquidated, the volume of inflow in 1993-95 was 37-52 km 3 per year. In 1996 the basin of the bay was filled, the inflow was reduced to 17 km 3 per year, determined by the amount of evaporation from the surface of the bay. At the beginning of the 21st century, the water level was -27.5 m, the area was about 18 thousand km2. The unique natural landscape is gradually being revived and the ecological situation around the bay is improving.

Kara-Bogaz-Gol is one of the largest basins of modern marine salt sedimentation, the largest mirabilite deposit of modern cages. The reserves of the deposit are represented by bottom salt deposits, surface brine and underground brines of salt horizons. In tectonic terms, the bay is located in the western part of the Turan platform. Salt horizons of bottom sediments are composed mainly of halite, glauberite, astrakhanite, less often epsomite, mirabilite and other minerals; separated by silty, clayey, often calcareous-magnesian-gypsum-bearing formations.

As a natural sedimentary basin of Glauber's salt, it has been known since 1897. The collection of mirabilite washed ashore as a result of winter storms has been carried out since 1910. The industrial extraction of salts from open basins (where mirabilite precipitates out of the brine as the temperature drops in winter) began in the late 1920s. Since 1954, underground brines have been extracted (density 1.19-1.27 kg / m 3, content of sulfate salts 5-8%) from a salt horizon with a thickness of 10-18 m. tons), bischofite (100 tons), as well as epsomite, sea salt, medical Glauber's salt.

Lit .: Kosarev A. N., Kostyanoy A. G. The phenomenon of Kara-Bogaz-Gol // Earth and the Universe. 2005. No. 1.

M. G. Deev, V. A. Kalita.