Ten facts about Lake Baikal

1. It's the deepest freshwater lake in the world (over 1,600m), and the biggest in terms of volume with 20% of the world's fresh water supply.
2. The surface temperature reaches 12 degrees Centigrade in summer. In winter, it freezes hard enough to drive across it. But the core of the lake remains a steady 4 degrees all year round.
3. People used to think that there was hardly any life in the lake, but in fact there is a large variety of different species because the water is highly oxygenated. 80% of these cannot be found anywhere else. The main barrier to exploring the lake has been its immense depth.
4. The lake is 80km wide at its widest point, and over 600km long.
5. Lake Baikal pushes the seasons back by around a month. In its immediate area, summer doesn't arrive until August while November is warmer than in nearby Irkutsk.
6. Lake Baikal is on a Tectonic fault line - that's how the lake was formed. There are frequent low-resonance earthquakes in the area.
7. The water from the lake is meant to be safe to drink because bacteria are eaten by some fish, crabs and sponges. I didn't see anyone doing it though!
8. If everyone who lived alongside Lake Baikal joined hands in a line, it would stretch for 200km, around a tenth of the circumference of the lake. If the same were done for Lake Michigan, the line would go around the lake eight times.
9. When the Trans Siberian train line was first built, it was considered too difficult to build a line around the edge of the lake, so passengers used a ferry to cross the lake and got back on the train on the other side. The Circumbaikal railway was built in the end, but these days it doesn't form part of the route and is only used by tourists.
10. Lake Baikal has the second highest visibility of any lake or sea: you can see down to about 40m. Only the Sargasso Sea has better visibility, where you can see down to about 60m.


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