The Caspian Sea

The Caspian Sea is a huge lake. The borders of Russia, Kazakhstan, Iran, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan are located on its shores. The northern, Middle, and Southern parts differ significantly from each other in climate, salinity, and depth.

Thirteen million years ago, when the surface of Eurasia was still forming, the waters of the Sarmatian Sea lapped at the site of the modern Caspian Sea. For thirteen thousand centuries, the sea has been advancing on land, then retreating from the shores, the earth's crust has been rising and falling, forming barriers, faults and depressions. It was only 2-3 thousand years ago that the Caspian reservoir finally acquired the forms we know, although its water level still fluctuates. The giant lake-sea is still "breathing".

Man has been exploring the Caspian Sea since the very beginning of ancient civilizations. The Greeks called this eastern sea Hyrcanus (Djurgian). The ancient Russians called him Khvalynsky. To this day, Azerbaijan and Iran consider the Khazar Sea. The modern Russian name goes back to the Latin Kasriim Mage, derived from the name of the people who lived here three thousand years ago.

So what is the Caspian Sea really — a sea or a lake? Scientists and politicians do not agree on this issue, depending on the situation, choosing a more convenient term. On the one hand, the sea should have access to the ocean, which the Caspian Sea cannot boast of (apart from the artificially created route to Azov through the Volga Delta, the Don and the Volga-Don Canal). In addition, for many centuries of isolated existence in the Caspian Sea, the salt composition of the waters has changed significantly. On the other hand, the reservoir is located in an oceanic type bed and is indeed the successor of the ancient Sarmatian Sea. And the dimensions speak for themselves.:

The area of the Caspian Sea is about 390,000 km2. It's bigger than Germany or Japan!
The maximum depth is about 1025 meters (in the southern part).
The length from north to south is about 1,200 km.
The length from west to east ranges from 200 to 435 km.
The volume of water is about 78,000 km3.
The coastline is up to 7,500 km long.

The Caspian Sea has many faces. The northern, Middle, and Southern parts differ significantly from each other in climate, salinity, and depth. The Northern Caspian is shallow, its shores are swampy, and it is not suitable for navigation, because the maximum depth here barely reaches 25 meters, while the average depth is only 4 meters. And the water here is fresher than in the south, because it is from the north that most rivers flow into the lake. The southern Caspian, on the contrary, is saltier and deeper (there are depressions over 1000 meters deep). And the water warms up much more here.

The Caspian Sea is a huge lake. The borders of Russia, Kazakhstan, Iran, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan are located on its shores. It is not surprising that with such a variety of "hosts" some of the problems of the Caspian Sea are systemic and difficult to solve.

For most tourists, the Caspian Lake is Terra incognita. For many years, the Soviet shores were undeservedly empty due to the proximity of the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus. And after the collapse of the USSR, the former republics did not have enough resources to quickly bring tourism services and infrastructure to the international level. Iran, being a Muslim country, does not support beach tourism at all. Thus, there is a huge potential for tourism development in the Caspian Sea. The capital of Azerbaijan, Baku, has been the most successful in this. Russia is betting on the resorts of Dagestan.

One of the main factors poisoning the life of the local flora and fauna is oil production. Human activity near the oil and gas fields of the "continental shelf", as well as the process of transporting hydrocarbons, negatively affect the purity of the Caspian waters. And since the lake has no outflow, the pollution level only increases every year.

Another source of ecological imbalance is the 130 rivers flowing into the lake. Among them are the Volga, which carries waters through the entire central part of Russia, and the Russian-Kazakh Ural River, the third longest in all of Europe, and the large Iranian Sefidrud River. Baku, a million-strong city, as well as densely populated Astrakhan, Makhachkala and other cities are located on the shores of the Caspian Sea. Their daily contribution to the pollution of the lake is estimated at thousands of cubic meters of wastewater.

There is also a threat to the biological diversity of the reservoir. The Caspian Sea is the world's main supplier of sturgeon fish and black caviar. The countries whose shores are washed by the Caspian Sea account for 90% of the officially harvested sturgeon in the world. In addition to legal fishing, poaching is rampant here, exacerbated by the fact that neighboring countries cannot resolve their differences on the division of resources. The current fishing treaties envisage only a ten-mile coastal national zone for exclusive fishing. The rest of the space is free for trapping and navigation. In this regard, the number of fish populations, especially individuals of sturgeon breeds, is significantly decreasing from year to year.

Protecting the Caspian Sea means preserving the pristine habitat for 1,800 species of animals, one fourth of which are vertebrates, and 700 species of plants. It also means preserving the world's largest population of sturgeon, the local endemic Caspian seal, and other valuable representatives of fauna and flora. To save the giant sea-lake, there is no need to wait for the heads of the five states located on its shores to agree. Officials and environmentalists from the border lake regions can start work.