Lake Baikal, the deepest and one of the more pristine lakes of the world is threatened by contamination

Located in south-central Siberia, Russia, not far from the Mongolian border and surrounded by mountains, forests and wild rivers, Lake Baikal is the world’s largest freshwater lake in terms of volume.

It is about 640 km (397 miles) long, and 80 km (50 miles) wide. It is also the deepest lake in the world, at 1,620 meters (5,314 feet).

It contains 20% of the world’s total unfrozen freshwater reserve (23,600 km3). Its surface area is 31,722 km2 and the average depth is 744 meters. The catchment area is 560,000 km2 and the excess water outflows through its emissary the Angara river, which in turn is a tributary of the Yenisei river out pouring in the Arctic sea.

There are more than thirty rocky islands in Lake Baikal.One of them is the world’s second largest island in a lake, Olkhon..

On Lake Baikal about a hundred gas (“mud”) volcanoes were found.

The water of Lake Baikal is renowned for being some of the clearest in the world. When the lake freezes during the winter, an amazing phenomena takes place: large shards of transparent ice form on the surface of the lake, giving the amazing appearance of turquoise ice.

In the photographs taken from space on the ice of Lake Baikal were found dark rings with a diameter of 5-7 kilometers, which appear in the same places, but not every year.

On the shores of Lake Baikal there are many grottoes.When Lake Baikal freezes in winter, the waves create amazing icicles in grottoes.
The water of Lake Baikal is one the most transparent of all freshwater lakes. In some areas of the lake you can see the bottom of it at a depth of 40 meters(130 feet)!

Ice on Lake Baikal in many places is completely transparent.

Water in the Lake Baikal is completely renewed approximately every 383 years.

The water level in Lake Baikal is at 456 meters (1496 feet) above sea level.

Lake Baikal experiences some real storms, the wave height of which that reaches up to 4-5 meters!

Its age and isolation have produced one of the world’s richest and most unusual freshwater faunas, which is of exceptional value to evolutionary science. Lake Baikal is home to more than 2,000 species of plants and animals, two-thirds of which can be found nowhere else in the world, including the Baikal omul fish and Baikal oil fish as well as the nerpa, one of the world’s only freshwater species of seal

The lake was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996.

Deep manned submersibles “Mir” found at the bottom of Lake Baikal huge amounts of gas hydrates.

However, during the last decades this pristine environment is becoming less immaculate with human effluents and debris.

More than 15,000 metric tons of toxic waste have flown into Russia’s Lake Baikal from its largest tributary, river Selenga, in the last decade, the state-run TASS news agency reported Monday.

Environmentalists have acknowledged pollution at the lake since at least 1998. Scientists warned last week that proposals by the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry to expand waste discharge limits violate Russian

The Selenga River — the largest to flow into Lake Baikal — received in excess of 15,000 metric tons of toxic substances since 2010, according to a Russian Academy of Sciences assessment on Lake Baikal obtained by TASS.

“The overall mass of pollutants released into the Selenga is even more dramatic” given the 56 million liters of sewage discharged daily into the river from the republic of Buryatia’s industrial city of Ulan-Ude, the assessment is cited as saying.

The scientists also blamed existing environmental regulations for preventing the launch of wastewater treatment facilities built in 2017.

The Natural Resources and Environment Ministry's proposals could enter into force as soon as May following public discussions.

Environmental concerns over Lake Baikal made headlines last month after public pressure forced local authorities to revoke a Chinese bottling plant’s construction license.