The first time I managed to see the Aral Sea and the Amudarya was in 1952, when large-scale studies on the northern route of the proposed but never developed Main Turkmen Canal were being developed. The Amudarya's delta with its blue- and green-colored lakes and vegetation contrasted sharply with the grayish, yellow-green desert areas of the Kynyadar' inskaya ancient alluvial deltaic plain and the saline soils (e.g.,solonchaks) of the Sarykamysh depression. Nothing noticeable was taking place in the natural environment at that time that warned us of the adverse environmental changes that would be observed after 1961.

In fact, I had noticed the first alarming symptoms of irrational use of water and of the adverse changes in the vegetational mix of desert landscapes even earlier, in 1958, while carrying out field studies of the Karabil'skaya fresh water lens in the southeastern part of the Karakum Desert. At that time the depressions between the ridges in the desert sands were beginning to flood as a result of the discharge of Amudarya water into the Karakum Canal which was then under construction. My concern about these environmental changes intensified in 1963–64, when I observed the filling of the Sarykamysh depression with waste water released through the Daryalyk channel. An eyewitness (Dr G.S. Kalenov) confirmed that, during the first year of water discharge into the Sarykamysh depression, the water disappeared into and filled with a rumble numerous underground karst cavities. Only after those underground cavities were filled did Lake Sarykamysh begin to appear in the Sarykamysh depression.