Protecting the world's deepest freshwater lake

Lake Baikal in Russia’s Siberia, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the object of a scientific effort intended to keep the water clean, protect the unique flora and fauna and its surroundings besides limiting human and industrial pressure on the world’s oldest and deepest freshwater lake. “If Lake Baikal suffers large-scale pollution, it will affect not only Siberia but also Mongolia and Northern China. Weather systems will be altered and water in connected rivers will become contaminated,” said our guide Olga as she took around a group of journalists to the tourist-end of the lake near the Russian city of Irkutsk. The total volume of water in Lake Baikal is said to be more than that of the five great lakes of America together. It contains about 23,000 cubic km or approximately 20% of Earth’s fresh water, is 1.6 km deep, 636 km long and 79 km wide. It has a surface area of 31,500 sq km.

The first sight of the lake does not live up to its tourist-information-brochure image with shimmering water in the foreground and snow-capped mountains in the background. However, on closer look the clean water in such a large water body takes one by surprise. I saw more of the bottom of the lake than in any other lake I have visited. Even in the dim light, fish swimming between the rocks and pebbles  could be noticed. This was from a part of the lake alongside a village called Listvyanka. How clean could the water be in the uninhabited parts of the lake, I wondered. As if she was reading my thoughts, Olga handed me a bottle of water marked ‘Baikal.’ The water has been drawn from the deepest part of the lake and bottled without filtration, she said. And sure enough, the water tasted nice, unlike any other ‘mineral’ water I had drunk.

Research & safeguard
Keeping the lake water clean is the task of the Baikal Limnological Museum (BLM), a research institution that also has a museum. The institute does a variety of research from measuring how much of hydrocarbons trickle to the bottom from boats plying on the surface to what type of pollutants are getting into the water. It also keeps a watch on the flora and fauna in the lake and recommend corrective measures to the various authorities involved in the lake’s management. Florina, a researcher at the institute explained that the role of BLM increased after Baikal was declared a world heritage site in 1996. It gathers and stores collections of Baikal’s aquatic organisms and preserves the gene pool of its endemic flora and fauna. A quarter of the plant and animal species present here are found nowhere else.

Using military-grade technology such as high-resolution satellites and unmanned submarines, BLM is able to conduct real-time surveys of Baikal’s underwater life. Its major success was a series of dives by deep-water manned submersibles to the bottom of the lake which allowed researchers to detect areas of chemosynthetic life, methane and gas hydrate accumulations besides detection of new biological species. This led to a set of recommendations to the government on where and when to allow tourism, fishing and to severely limit the plying of large tourist boats.

Most tourists go to view the showpiece aquatic animals of Lake Baikal, the Nepra seal, a species endemic to the lake and surrounding waterways. Hunted to near extinction during the two world wars, the Nepra seal has made a remarkable comeback in the last 50 years. Among the conservation measures is one which led to the installation of remote controlled video cameras in the seal rookeries of Ushkan Islands in the middle of the lake and beam images to screens in the museum. This serves a two-fold purpose: monitor environmental threats to the seal population and to prevent tourists from boating up to the rookeries for seal watching. This is something that Indian tiger sanctuaries can implement to avoid disturbances to the tigers. Following the World Heritage Site tag, dumping of garbage, emptying raw effluents and industrial activity within 10 km from the shore has been banned. A paper mill near the lake has been shut and garbage is collected and systematically disposed elsewhere. Fishing and tourism activity is extensively regulated.

While conservation measures have helped the lake, environmental pressures in the vast areas of Siberia, Mongolia and China are affecting the lake’s ecology. Locals say that a drought in Siberia for over three years now has led to a rise in temperatures affecting the size of the ice sheet which accumulates on the lake in winter. A story goes that ice on the lake’s surface was so deep in the beginning of the 20th century that the Russian army set up a rail road on its surface during the Russia-Japan war in 1905. A looming threat is a dam which Mongolia wants to build across River Selenga, the largest of the rivers which flow into Lake Baikal. The China-funded project is being bitterly opposed by Russia. Another threat is growing tourism, which has increased from 3,00,000 in 2009 to 1.3 million in 2015, according Russian tourist information. With so many threats affecting the future of the lake, it is imperative that conservation takes a stronger stride. After all, its future is in our hands and we must do everything in our power to protect it.