The Aral Sea is a former closed salt lake in Central Asia, on the border of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Since the 1960s, the sea level (and the volume of water in it) began to decline rapidly, including due to the withdrawal of water from the main feeding rivers of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya for irrigation purposes, in 1989 the sea split into two bodies of water connected by the narrowed Berg Strait - North (Small) and South (Big) Aral Sea.