Lake Baikal

The deepest and oldest lake in the world

Baikal is the deepest lake in the world — 1,642 metres! It holds 20% of all the fresh water on Earth — the whole world could drink from it for 40 years. The water is so clear you can see stones 40 metres down. In winter the lake freezes a metre thick and cars drive across the ice. Baikal has nerpa seals that live nowhere else on Earth!

Baikal is a rift lake in eastern Siberia: 636 km long, 1,642 m deep (the deepest in the world), holding 23,600 km³ of water — 20% of Earth's surface fresh water, more than all of North America's Great Lakes combined. At 25–30 million years old it is the oldest lake; the rift widens 2 cm a year and may one day become an ocean. Visibility is 40 m — the lake is filtered by tiny epischura crustaceans. It has more than 1,700 species, two-thirds endemic: the Baikal nerpa (the only freshwater seal), the golomyanka (a transparent live-bearing fish) and the omul. 336 rivers flow in and only one, the Angara, flows out. In winter the ice is 1–1.5 m thick — the famous 'clear ice'. A UNESCO site (1996). For the Buryat people it is the sacred 'Baikal Sea'.

Fun facts

• Baikal holds enough fresh water for the whole world for 40 years.
• Baikal widens 2 cm a year — in millions of years it will be an ocean.
• The Baikal nerpa is the only freshwater seal, living 3,000 km from the sea.