LocationsBringing Fish Back to the Land the Water Left Behind
July 1, 2026
Ayapbergen Ajimuratov stands in one of his ponds, holding a vessel with Artemia, the tiny saltwater organism at the heart of the production cycle at his "Ayap Jeri" enterprise
The Aral Sea region was once known for its fish. For generations, fishing shaped how people here lived and worked, and as the sea disappeared, so did the livelihoods built around it. Today, on a single hectare of land in Karakalpakstan, Uzbekistan, Ayapbergen Ajimuratov is bringing fish back, not to the sea, but to the land the water left behind.
Ayapbergen Ajimuratov stands at the edge of his ponds in the Kegeyli district, looking at the water. In the sunlight its surface gleams like silver, and along the edges, where the moisture dries, a thin white crust of salt appears. This water is saline, the very water long considered useless here. Yet that saltiness is exactly what makes his work possible.
For most people, this water was useless, unfit for drinking or watering crops, but Ayapbergen saw an opportunity. Rather than discarding it as waste, he decided to put it to use, becoming one of the first in the district to develop aquaculture and build a circular economy model adapted to local conditions. It was a risk: there were no proven examples nearby, and no one could guarantee success. But it was from that risk that the "Ayap Jeri" enterprise began.
When the district set out to develop aquaculture, Ayapbergen was allocated a plot of land, and he applied for support to turn the idea into a working enterprise. Through the UNDP project "Enhancing the Resilience of Local Communities and Promoting Green and Inclusive Development in the Most Vulnerable Communities of the Aral Sea Region", funded by the Government of the Russian Federation, he received everything the cycle required to begin: six ponds, solar panels, an electrical transformer for stable power, and a freezer to store the harvest, and an on-site cabin beside the ponds. Today the enterprise is up and running, and Ayapbergen has hired his first workers, bringing new jobs to the community.
It begins with water that would otherwise be lost. A community water purification system supplies around 1,500 cubic meters of saline water year-round. Too salty for irrigation, it turns out to be ideal for cultivating Artemia, a tiny saltwater organism that thrives in exactly these conditions. The ponds now produce around 300 kilograms of Artemia every month.
This Artemia becomes feed for the fish. Ayapbergen raises snakehead, a fish valued in local markets, and he started with 7,000 fingerlings. He feeds the Artemia to the young fish, which grow and gain weight, and in time the enterprise will reach a capacity of up to 10,000 fish, each weighing between 0.8 and 1.5 kilograms. Nothing in the chain goes to waste, as each stage feeds the next.
"Many people said nothing could be grown in this water. But I saw an opportunity in it. I just had to try," Ayapbergen says.
The cycle is efficient by design. The region's warm climate works in the enterprise's favour: sunlight helps maintain a water temperature of around 30 degrees Celsius in the ponds, well suited to fish growth. This thermal regime significantly shortens what is traditionally a two-year fish production cycle. Because the system reuses its own outputs, feed costs are reduced by about 60 percent, and water loss is kept to a minimum through continuous reuse. In essence, this is a circular economy in miniature: what was considered waste becomes a resource, that resource stays in use at every stage, and degraded land is brought back to productive life.
The sun powers all of this. Above the ponds, pumps run quietly, driven by a 30-kilowatt solar energy system that supports water circulation, aeration, and the cold storage of the harvest. Clean energy has freed the enterprise from dependence on costly or unreliable power, keeping the water moving and the conditions stable day and night.
At market, snakehead sells for 25,000 to 45,000 UZS per kilogram, and Artemia for around 10,000 UZS per kilogram. Together they create several streams of income from a single, connected system. For the community, this means not only food, but also work close to home, in a place where opportunity has often meant leaving, along with restored land that had been written off.
For the Aral Sea region, the significance reaches beyond one enterprise. Saline water is one of the few things this landscape has in abundance, and an approach that treats it as a resource rather than a burden can be adopted by others. Ayapbergen's enterprise was designed from the start as a growing and teaching site: raising water productivity further, producing dried Artemia feed locally, diversifying into new species such as shemaya and shrimp, and serving as a demonstration plot where neighbours and other producers can see for themselves how the cycle works and replicate it on their own land. It reflects a broader shift toward circular, resource-efficient models of development, in which the same volume of water delivers value many times over.
By evening, the ponds are quiet. Artemia thrives in water that was once discarded, the fish feed, and the solar panels store the day's energy for the work ahead. In a region long shaped by the loss of its water, Ayapbergen's ponds offer a practical example of how local resources, used differently, can sustain both people and land.
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Contact for additional information:
- Alisher Utemisov, UNDP Programme Coordinator in Aral Sea Region, alisher.utemisov@undp.org
- Gulnur Kaypnazarova, Public Relations Associate, gulnur.kaypnazarova@undp.org
