Caviar would keep them in good health, she believed. Kozybakov did not like it. It was salty and “smelled like the sea”, said Kozybakov, an ecologist, now 51. He grew up in Aktau, a city in western Kazakhstan on the shores of the Caspian Sea.

But now, more than 40 years later, he looks back at this family ritual with nostalgia. Today, there is no more natural caviar left in Aktau’s shops. Sturgeons are an endangered species due to overfishing and the degradation of their habitat. And soon, the sea might be gone, too. According to a study published in Nature magazine in April, the Caspian Sea level is likely to decline by up to 18 metres (59 feet) and could lose up to 34 percent of its surface by the end of the century. Water decline of even five to 10 metres may disrupt key ecosystems in the area, including habitats for endemic Caspian seals and sturgeon, the study says.

For residents like Kozybakov, who is a member of a civil advisory body on the environment at the Ministry of Ecology, this has been clear for years. “We don’t have to conduct any studies to know that the sea is shrinking. It is visible with the naked eye,” Kozybakov told Al Jazeera. Located between Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Azerbaijan, the Caspian Sea is the world’s largest landlocked body of water, part of the “Middle Corridor” – the fastest route from China to Europe bypassing Russia, and a major source of oil and gas.

Many fear that the Caspian Sea may share the fate of the nearby Aral Sea, located between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, which began to shrink in the 1960s as the rivers supplying it were extensively used by the Soviets to irrigate cotton fields.

Currently, the sea occupies only 10 percent of its original surface, and its decline has had a tremendous effect on the local ecosystem and people’s health. As in the case of the Aral Sea, the Caspian’s woes are not been driven only by climate change. (Al Jazeera/ Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska)