The world’s largest lake is shrinking due to climate change and could soon completely disappear, experts fear.
The Caspian Sea’s coastline stretches 4,000 miles and borders five countries: Kazakhstan, Iran, Azerbaijan, Russia, and Turkmenistan.
The body of water is often described as the world’s largest The people of these countries rely on the Caspian Sea for food and natural resources.
But pollution is now causing water levels to fall.
One expert told CNN that this “might wipe out the remaining survivors of millions of years of evolution…a massive crisis that almost no one knows about.”
Matthias Prange, an Earth systems modeller at the University of Bremen in Germany, also told the outlet that water levels are set to fall “drastically.”
He forecasts declines of 8 to 18 metres by the end of the century.
Warning signs have come from the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, where the water has almost completely disappeared due to climate change.
Russia has also not helped the situation. Moscow has built 40 dams, with 18 more in development, in areas connected to the Caspian Sea.
Irina Makarova, head of the Russian Natural Resources Ministry, warned earlier this year that the Caspian seal is in danger of extinction.
She said: “We see that the number of this rare species is concretely heading toward extinction.”
An international maritime expert, who wished to remain unnamed, told the Moscow Times: “Even the lower value [the least sea level decline] would mean the North Caspian — about one-third of the total current area of the Caspian Sea – will disappear.
“This means the area where the winter ice sheet currently forms, which is the breeding habitat for Caspian seals, will be gone.”