The largest freshwater lake on our planet is Baikal. Its depth reaches 1637 meters, and the age of this unique reservoir, according to scientists, is more than twenty-five million years.
Among the researchers of the lake, there is a hypothesis that Baikal is the future ocean: it has no signs of aging, its shores are constantly expanding. The only river flowing out of Baikal is the Angara, which is 1779 kilometers long. The source of the Angara is the widest (863 m) and largest on Earth.
Baikal fish is known not only in Siberia, the fame of it has long crossed the borders of our country. Its taste is legendary. Dried or smoked omul is a traditional gift that Siberians bring to their friends in many Russian cities. Once having tasted Baikal fish dishes, most travelers plan their next trip to Baikal to enjoy the magnificent nature again and feel the taste of smoked whitefish, fried grayling and the aroma of smoked omul and dried golomyanka.
Baikal Nature Reserve
To preserve the unique nature of Lake Baikal in 1969, a biosphere reserve was founded here,which is located on the east side of the lake. It occupies a vast territory - 167,871 hectares of the Khamar-Daban mountain range. The borders of the Baikal nature reserve run along the rivers Mishikha and Vydrinnaya. The mountains surrounding Lake Baikal are a natural barrier against air currents carrying intense precipitation.
Hundreds of unique species of flora and fauna are preserved in the reserve. The Baikal Reserve is famous for rare representatives of the underwater world. There are twelve kinds of fish in it. These are mainly lenok, taimen and grayling. These species enter the rivers during spawning, and at the end of summer they return to Baikal again, where they spend the winter.
Types of Baikal fish
And in total in Baikal (including protected areas) there are more than fifty species of fish. Only fifteen are classified as commercial. The most famous of them are grayling, whitefish and omul. In smaller quantities, such valuable Baikal fish as Baikal sturgeon, taimen, burbot and lenok are common. In addition, perch, ide, horned live in the lake.
According to the latest data, the total biomass of fish in the lake is about two hundred and thirty thousand tons, including sixty thousand tons of commercial fish. To increase the number of valuable fish species in Irkutsk, Baikal Fish LLC was created, the activities of which we will tell a little later.
Below we will present you a list of the most common types of Baikal fish:
- taimen;
- lenok;
- omul;
- arctic charr;
- sig;
- grayling;
- pike;
- ide;
- bream
- Siberian dace;
- minnow;
- Siberian roach;
- minnow;
- carp;
- lin;
- Amur carp;
- Siberian char;
- Amur catfish;
- Siberian pluck;
- burbot;
- rattan;
- 27 kinds of sculpins;
- golomyanka;
- yellowfly.
Let's get acquainted with some species in more detail.
Sig
This is a lake cold-water fish that spawns and lives in Baikal. The population is represented by lake-river and lake forms that have the status of subspecies. They differ in the number of gill rakers, perforated scales located in the lateral line. Baikal whitefish of the lake form has from twenty-five to thirty-five gill rakers. These fish usually spawn in Baikal.
Whitefish is a river form with significantly fewer stamens, a maximum of twenty-four. In Baikal, as well as its tributaries, this fish is anadromous; it spends its life in constant migrations. It usually spawns in rivers, 250 km from the mouth, and feeds in the waters of Lake Baikal. Unlike its lake relatives, it has a rather low body and tight-fitting scales.
Sig is common in almost the entire lake, but its highest concentration is observed in the Barguzinsky and Chivyrkuisky bays, in the Selenga shallow water and in the Small Sea. Often it is found in the pre-estuary space of the Upper Angara and Kichera rivers. Sig prefers shallow waterwith sandy soil. Representatives of the lake-river form live deeper than twenty meters. In winter, they descend at a depth of up to 150 m, and in summer and spring - at a depth of 40-50 meters.
The average weight of a five-year-old individual is 500 grams, a seven-year-old whitefish already weighs one and a half kilograms, and by the age of 15, the weight of a fish can reach 5 kg. Fishermen claim that they were able to catch whitefish weighing more than 10 kg. Whitefish is a valuable Baikal fish, the fishery of which, according to scientists, should now be reduced, especially during the spawning season. To increase its numbers, artificial breeding is necessary with the obligatory rearing of juveniles. This process takes into account the ecological features of all stages of development.
Omul
Baikal fish omul is represented in the lake by five populations:
- embassy;
- selenginskaya;
- chivirkuyskaya;
- North Baikal;
- Barguzinskaya.
Before reaching the lake, you will meet the most famous and delicious representative of the omul - North Baikal. It can be seen in all retail outlets in cities, at railway stations, in small towns. During the journey, locals will offer you dried and s alted omul, and when you get to the lake you can see freshly caught omul.
Baikal omul is a fish belonging to the whitefish genus, the Salmon family. Once a huge and extremely popular inhabitant of Lake Baikal, today it has significantly decreased in size, and, unfortunately, is on the verge of extinction. His body lengthtoday does not exceed fifty centimeters with a weight of three kilograms.
The most popular among tourists, as well as among locals, is cold-smoked omul. This is really a real delicacy, not only in our country, but also abroad. This valuable Baikal fish, the meat of which has a very special taste that cannot be confused with another. It is very soft and oily. With proper preparation, it has an unusual aftertaste, for which it is appreciated. Most tourists who taste this perfection for the first time say that they have never eaten anything more delicious in their lives.
Security measures
This Baikal fish catastrophically reduces the number of populations due to too intensive catching. Over the past fifty years, about forty thousand centners of this fish have been caught. For this reason, in 1982, a special program for catching omul was developed and adopted, which made it possible to calculate stocks, as well as develop methods for rational fishing. In recent years, they increasingly resort to incubation of omul. We hope that thanks to conservation activities, this Baikal fish, the photo of which you can see below, will be preserved and its population will increase.
grayling
Baikal white grayling is a subspecies of Siberian grayling. In the lake, this Baikal fish lives almost near the shore, most often found in the eastern part, where the depth does not exceed thirty meters. For spawning, grayling prefers shallows with a pebble-sandy bottom or rifts. Spawning begins at the end of April andcontinues until mid-May. At this time, the water temperature ranges from +7.5 to +14.6 °C.
During the mating season, graylings change color: the body of males becomes dark gray, with a metallic sheen. And above the ventral fins, copper-red spots appear on the dorsal fin. The upper edge of the dorsal fin is decorated with a dark red border. The development of eggs of this species lasts approximately seventeen days.
Sturgeon
This is the oldest and largest fish in Baikal Kamchatka. The first information about it can be found in the reports of Nikolai Spafariy and Archpriest Avvakum, who visited the wonderful lake at the very beginning of the 17th century. I. G. Gmelin (1751) pointed out the huge amount of sturgeon in it when he described his journey through Siberia. I. G. Georgi, a well-known naturalist-researcher, at the end of the 17th century described in detail in his notes the sturgeon living in the lake, as well as the fishing of this fish in the Selenga River.
A. G. Egorov studied the Baikal sturgeon for many years. He did a great job of researching the mouths of rivers, bays, describing its abundance, distribution, biology, as well as fishing in various areas of the lake. The famous Russian writer V. P. Astafiev called him “the king-fish.”
Sturgeon is the only representative of cartilaginous fish in Baikal. Its color varies from pale brown to dark brown, the belly is always much lighter. Along the whole body there are five rows of special bone bugs, and between them there are small bone plates,having different shapes. The caudal fin, more precisely, its upper lobe, is noticeably longer than the lower one.
Where is the sturgeon common?
The most common sturgeon is in the delta of the Selenga River, in the bays of Lake Baikal. It lives at a depth of up to fifty meters. In autumn, during strong winds, it can go to a depth of 150 meters. Winters in the mouths of large rivers, in pits. On average, this fish grows by 5-7 cm per year. An adult individual reaches a meter or more in length with a weight of 100 kg. The Baikal sturgeon is listed in the Red Books of the Russian Federation and Buryatia as a rare species.
Sor fish
The well-known fish in Siberia “came” to the lake along large and small rivers: perches and pikes, ide and dace, horned and crucian carp, however, deep Baikal did not accept them, since there are other depths, other food, different temperature. These fish have taken root in the litters - in the shallow bays of Lake Baikal, and taimen and lenok got into the lake along the large tributaries of Baikal and can be found in the mouths of rivers.
Inhabitants of the freshwater depths
About twenty million years ago, cottoid fish began to enter the rivers, trying to adapt to a freshwater lifestyle. They got to Baikal along the rivers. At first, they settled in shallow water, then in deep water areas, as well as in the water column. Today, 14 species of cottoid fish live in the rivers and lakes of Eurasia, including those near the islands of Japan, and there are 33 species in Baikal.
Most (84%) of Baikal's cottoid fish live at the bottom. Often they just "sit" on the ground. to them evenyou can touch it with your hand, and only in this case they “jump” forty to eighty centimeters and freeze again, sinking to the ground.
Some species of bottom fish prefer to burrow into sand or silt so that only round eyes can be seen above the ground surface. Often these fish are found under stones (they are often called sculpins for this reason), in burrows, in crevices. In 1977, researchers from the scientific submarine Pisis saw a red sculpin at a depth of 800 m. She dug a hole in the mud, into which she climbed, put forward only her head, and attacked amphipods swimming past her shelter.
Color
Baikal fish caught at great depths have the most diverse colors. Coastal species tend to have gray or gray-green scales, and dark spots are clearly visible on the sides of the body. Occasionally there are fish painted in an unusual emerald green color. With increasing depth, the color of underwater inhabitants changes to gray with red stripes, pink, pearl gray, brown, orange.
Golomyanka
Despite the interesting features of all cottoid fish, the golomyanok should be recognized as the most unique of them. This is the largest population in the lake. Its total biomass is almost twice as high as all other fish that live in Baikal. It is more than one hundred and fifty thousand tons. This is a viviparous fish that does not spawn: it gives birth to live fry.
There are two varieties of this fish in Baikal - large and small. Both of them are found at different depths, down to the very bottom. Golomyankas, in addition to zooplankton, also eat their offspring. And despite this, the annual growth of this fish is about one hundred and fifty thousand tons. In other words, within one year it completely renews the population.
It is impossible to organize industrial trapping for golomyanka, since it is dispersed over long distances and is food for the Baikal seal and omul. The largest representatives of the species reach 25 cm in length (females), males - 15 cm.
LLC "Baikal Fish"
At the beginning of our article, we said that this company was created in 2009 for the artificial reproduction of Baikal's fish resources. It carries out fish breeding on the basis of the Belsky and Burduguz fish hatcheries.
Thanks to the activities of this organization, bred fry of such especially valuable fish species as grayling, sturgeon, omul, peled and others are annually released into the reservoirs of the Irkutsk region, and into Lake Baikal, among other things.
Since 2011, more than forty million juvenile fish have been released into various reservoirs and the republics of Buryatia, the Trans-Baikal Territory, the Irkutsk Region.
