How did fish get to Lake Baikal?

The ancestors of cottoid fish emerged in the Far-Eastern seas of Russia. During the Miocene, about 20 million years ago, they began to invade rivers, adapting to life in fresh water. Moving down the rivers, they ended up in Lake Baikal, first in its shallow waters, then in deep waters and the water column.



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The ringed seals is considered the ancestor of the Baikal seal, and are thought to have reached the lake by traveling up the river system and drainage that runs from the lake to the Arctic Ocean some 400,000 years ago during the Pleistocene.

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Baikal is one of the few lakes on the planet in which, according to the standards, it is allowed to take water for drinking from open reservoirs. Water is extracted from special layers of the lake, which were on the surface of the lake hundreds of years ago, from a depth of 400m.

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The largest species is the Siberian sturgeon, which sometimes measures more than 6 1/2 feet (2 meters) long. The only mammal is the Baikal seal. The first hydrothermal vents, or hot-water springs, ever discovered in a freshwater lake were found at the bottom of Lake Baikal in 1990.

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Lake Baikal is so deep because it is located in an active continental rift zone. The rift zone is widening at a rate of about 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) per year. As the rift grows wider, it also grows deeper through subsidence. So, Lake Baikal could grow wider and deeper in the future.

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Not only is Lake Baikal safe to swim in, but it also boasts some of the purest water in the world. The only drawback is the temperature - even during the warmer months, a dip in the lake is pretty invigorating.

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Russian explorers using two mini-submarines reached the bottom of Siberia's vast Lake Baikal - one of the last relatively unexplored frontiers on Earth. The team announced they had sunk to a record depth of 1,680 metres (5,512 ft).

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The bottom of the lake is 1,186.5 m (3,893 ft; 648.8 fathoms) below sea level, but below this lies some 7 km (4.3 mi) of sediment, placing the rift floor some 8–11 km (5.0–6.8 mi) below the surface, the deepest continental rift on Earth.

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