The Aral Sea is an endorheic basin in Central Asia; it lies between Kazakhstan (Aktobe and Kyzylorda provinces) in the north and Karakalpakstan, an autonomous region of Uzbekistan, in the south. The name roughly translates as "Sea of Islands", referring to more than 1,500 islands that once dotted its waters. The maximum depth of the sea is 102 feet (31 m). Once the world's fourth-largest inland saline body of water,[citation needed] with an area of 68,000 km2, the Aral Sea has been steadily shrinking since the 1960s after the rivers that fed it were diverted by Soviet Union irrigation projects. By 2007 it had declined to 10% of its original size, splitting into three lakes the North Aral Sea and the eastern and western basins of the once far larger South Aral Sea. By 2009, the south- eastern lake had disappeared and the south-western lake retreated to a thin strip at the extreme west of the former southern sea. The region's once prosperous fishing industry has been virtually destroyed, bringing unemployment and economic hardship.