CNN —There’s a spot on the shoreline from where Azamat Sarsenbayev used to jump into the brackish, blue-green Caspian Sea. Azamat SarsenbayevThe Caspian Sea is the planet’s largest inland sea and it’s largest lake, an enormous body of water roughly the size of Montana. NASAOver many thousands of years, the Caspian Sea has swung between highs and lows as temperatures fluctuated and ice sheets advanced and retreated. Their pupping sites in the shallower northeastern Caspian Sea are shifting and disappearing, as the animals also struggle against pollution and overfishing. Scientists counted 25,000 at one haul-out site on the Durnev Islands in the northeast Caspian Sea in 2009.

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Persons: CNN —, Sarsenbayev, ”, Javanmardi, Azamat, Vali Kaleji, Matthias Prange, ” Prange, Joy Singarayer, Muhammed Enes Yildirim, Hossein Beris, University of Tehran’s Kaleji, ” Singarayer, ” Wesslingh, It’s, Kazbek Basayev, Reuters It’s, Assel Baimukanova, Kaleji, Aziz Karimov, Ilham Aliyev Organizations: CNN, NASA, Central, Caucasian Studies, University of Tehran, University of Bremen, University of Reading, Getty, University of Tehran’s, Reuters, Institute of Hydrobiology, “, Caspian, United Nations Locations: Aktau, Kazakhstan, Iranian, Rasht, Montana, Iran, Azerbaijan, Russia, Turkmenistan, Central Asia, Aral, Uzbekistan, Germany, Anadolu, Galugah, Mazandaran province, Makhachkala, Baku, COP29, ”