New island near Kazakhstan’s Kulaly shows the Caspian Sea’s retreat

A small island has emerged near Kazakhstan’s Kulaly Island in the Caspian Sea, Euronews reported on 7 October 2026, after an aerial survey spotted the newly exposed land days earlier. Its appearance offers a visible sign of falling water levels in the sea’s shallow northern reaches, where independent research has also documented extensive shoreline retreat and changes to habitat used by Caspian seals.

Volunteer and environmental activist Daniyar Akimzhanov, who was part of the group reporting the discovery, told Euronews that this was the smallest of several new islands he had documented in the area over the previous four to five years. The report did not establish the new island’s coordinates or area. Nor is its permanence known: the Kazakh Research Institute of the Caspian Sea told Euronews that the fate of exposed land depends on seabed shape, waves, wind-driven changes in water level and the sea’s subsequent movement.

How far has the northern Caspian retreated?

The northern and northeastern Caspian along Kazakhstan is generally only three to six metres deep, according to Euronews. In such shallow water, a fall in level can expose large stretches of seabed. The report cited instrumental observations showing that the level in the Kazakh sector fell from minus 26.82 metres in 1996 to minus 29.27 metres in 2025, a decline of 2.45 metres. These are reported water-level measurements, separate from estimates of how much land a future decline might expose.

The Kazakh Research Institute said the average level at the Kulaly Island monitoring station reached minus 29.42 metres in July 2026, the lowest in its study period, Euronews reported. The institute’s analysis put the loss of water-covered area in its studied northeastern Caspian region at about 16,384 square kilometres between 2000 and 2025. Those figures are attributed to the institute through Euronews; its underlying station and area records are not presented in the report.

What does the retreat mean for Caspian seals?

The 2025 study found that most of Komsomol Bay, an important spring moulting site for Caspian seals, had dried by 2024. Seals could no longer reach its islands for moulting. Field and aerial observations from 2018 to 2023 indicated that seals shifted to newly emergent northern islands, where they were observed at lower densities. The new land near Kulaly has not been identified as a replacement seal site.

The researchers examined what further falls in sea level could mean, while distinguishing those scenarios from observed changes. In a modeled five-metre decline, about 77,000 square kilometres of current water area, roughly one-fifth of the sea’s present surface, would become land. Under that scenario, the study estimates that the current Caspian seal breeding Important Marine Mammal Area could lose about 57% of its water and winter-ice-accessible area. The estimated loss could reach 81% if a northern sub-basin became isolated.

The study also found that declines of 2.5 to five metres would make all the current and historical seal haul-out sites it assessed inaccessible. It did not establish whether seals could adapt by breeding on newly emerged islands. That question matters because an exposed island can change shape or join the mainland as water continues to retreat; the presence of new land alone does not demonstrate that suitable seal habitat has been preserved.

Why are water levels falling, and what remains uncertain?

Hydroclimate scientist Sifan Koriche explained to Euronews that the Caspian receives water from rivers and precipitation, while evaporation removes it. The report identified climate change and human water use, including river regulation by dams and withdrawals across the basin, as influences on that balance. It also noted that Caspian levels have changed direction before: they fell about three metres from the 1930s to 1977, then rose about 2.5 metres over roughly the next two decades before declining again.

The shallow northern basin makes further retreat consequential for people as well as wildlife. The 2025 study assessed scenarios in which a five-metre fall would leave some settlements, ports, industrial facilities and fishing activity farther from shore or exposed to disruption. These are potential effects of a modeled decline, not a finding that every such disruption has happened. Future levels depend on climate-model assumptions and greenhouse-gas emissions, and the study examined multiple decline scenarios rather than identifying one certain outcome.

For the island near Kulaly, the immediate unanswered questions are its precise extent and whether it will remain separated from the surrounding shore. Its reported emergence fits a documented regional retreat, but the observation alone cannot show how quickly the whole Caspian will change. Continued measurements around Kulaly and across the northern basin will determine how the newly exposed land and nearby coast develop.