Caspian Water Level Falling So Fast that New Islands are Appearing and Shipping is at Risk, Russian Specialists Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 12 – The water level of the Caspian Sea is continuing to fall so fast that new and as yet-unnamed islands are appearing and shipping lanes and ports are in some places no longer accessible by larger ships, according to experts at the Russian Institute of Oceanology on the basis of an expedition there last month.

            “Over the course of the last 30 years,” one of its participants says, “the level of the Caspian Sea has fallen approximately 30 meters. This trend has occurred in the sea as a whole but the most significant manifestations of the fall … have been in the north” (casp-geo.ru/rossijskie-okeanologi-zafiksirovali-prirost-beregovoj-linii-na-kaspii/).

            There, the sea has always been shallower than in the south; and there too the declining flow of water into the Caspian from the Volga River has had the greatest immediate impact. The appearance of islands, some likely temporary but others permanent, is a manifestation of this pattern.

            According to the Russian investigators, the possibility of seriously reducing the decline in the water levels of the Caspian are slight, at least over the next 25 to 50 years for which scholars have made predictions. As a result, more islands will appear, more ports will be isolate, and more shipping lanes will be limited in their ability to handle large ships.