![]() ![]() ![]() As the sun rose, Azerbaijan came to life all around us. ![]() We headed south on a five-hour drive towards the Iranian border. I was greeted by my colleague and friend Surkhay who runs IDEA, a local NGO focused on protecting the Caspian environment. This is what I was thinking about as the plane swooped over Azerbaijan’s gas fields and the bright lights of Baku, landing on an arid-looking peninsula. ![]() It’s home to endemic species of sturgeon, salmon, seal, kutum, kilka anchovy and lamprey, but also sits on a large store of oil and natural gas. The Caspian Sea is the worlds largest inland body of water. At a worrying time in history for the world’s oceans, the Caspian Sea faces more threats than most. As the northern Caspian sea-ice melts, endangered Caspian seals lose their essential birthing ice-fields. These very dams prevent many of these rare, migratory species from reaching their upper-river spawning grounds. As these hydrocarbons are pumped to the surface and burned, CO 2 is released into the atmosphere, the planet gets warmer and fresh water becomes scarcer in this region, leading to the construction of river dams to control water flow. As a marine biologist working in the region, I often wonder how the fragile Caspian Sea marine environment, with its endemic species of sturgeon, salmon, seal, kutum, kilka anchovy and lamprey, will survive, living on top of such an economically valuable resource. A further 48 billion barrels of oil lie untapped under the seabed. The Caspian Sea, the world’s largest inland body of water, sits on enough natural gas to fuel the UK at its current consumption for 32 million years. Five years on from his first trip to the Caspian, Rory Moore returned to Azerbaijan to find signs of hope for some of the largest and rarest remaining aquatic behemoths on the planet. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |