The etymology of the name of the lake has several versions. According to one of them, the word is Turkic and means "rich lake" - Bai-Kul. According to another, the name of the reservoir was given by the Mongols, and it means either “rich fire” (Baigal), or “big sea” (Baigal Dalai). And the Chinese called it the "North Sea" (Bei-Hai).
Baikal Lake Basin as an orographic unit is a complex formation of the earth's crust. It began to form 25-30 million years ago, and recent studies show that the process of lake formation continues. According to geologists, Baikal is the embryo of the future ocean. Its shores "scatter", and after some time (several million years), a new ocean will replace the lake. But this is a matter of the distant future. Why is Baikal interesting for us today?
First of all, by its geographical characteristics. Maximumthe depth of Baikal is 1637 meters. This is the highest figure among all the lakes in the world. African Lake Tanganyika, in second place, is a full 167 meters behind.
The average depth of Baikal is also very great - seven hundred and thirty meters! The area of the lake (more than 31 thousand sq. km.) is approximately equal to the area of a small European country (Belgium or Denmark).
The depth of Baikal is also due to the huge number of large and small rivers, rivers and streams (336!), flowing into the lake. Only Angara flows out of it.
More Baikal is the world's largest reservoir of the purest fresh water, slightly larger in volume than all five great American lakes (Superior, Huron, Erie, Michigan and Ontario)! In numbers, this will be more than 23,600 cubic kilometers. The great depth of Baikal and the impressive area of the water surface became the reason that the locals dubbed this lake lying in the depths of Eurasia the sea. Here, as on a real sea, storms and even tides occur, although they are of small magnitude.
Why is the water of Lake Baikal so transparent that at a depth of up to forty (!) meters the bottom is visible? The channels of the rivers that feed the lake are located in hardly soluble crystalline rocks, as is the bed of the lake itself. Therefore, the mineralization of Baikal is minimal and amounts to 120 milligrams per liter.
Given that the depth of Baikal is 1637 meters, and the coastline is 456 meters above sea level, it turns out that the bottom of the lake is the deepest continental depression in the world.
In August 2009, the Mir-1 submersible dived at the deepest point of Lake Baikal, not far from Olkhon Island. The dive lasted over an hour. For five and a half hours, video filming was carried out at the bottom of the lake and samples of bottom rocks and water were taken. During the descent, several new organisms were discovered and a place where oil pollution of the lake occurs.
For ten years, nine kilometers from the coast at a depth of 1370 meters, an autonomous deep-water station has been operating, which houses equipment for monitoring the Earth's electromagnetic field. Scientists expect that the accuracy of research will be affected by the depth of Lake Baikal, because the equipment is installed almost a kilometer below sea level. And a station for collecting, processing and transmitting information was installed on the shore to process incoming data.
