Since 1960 agricultural demands has deprived this large Central Asian salt lake of the water to sustain itself.
The shrinking of Aral sea is one of the greatest environmental catastrophes ever recorded; consequences include fishery losses, water and soil contaminations, polluted aerosol.
In addition to this, the once small island in the center of the sea, which hosted the USSR facility for chemical and biological weapons, is now fully connected to the mainland, thus allowing easy access to its deadly products.

The MODIS image sequence shows that the Sea is now split into two big lakes; the north lake is quite stable and apparently started growing again in 2006 due to an increase of the water flow from the Syr Darya river.
The south lake is apparently abandoned to his fate and has shrunk to well under one fifth of the area it had covered fifty years before.

Satellite data courtesy NASA - GSFC - LDAAC

It wasn't a Salt sea at that time. I know, I swam in it.