Earth’s biggest, deepest, lake is in big trouble. People there point to Chinese tourists and say China covets Lake Baikal, but its problems lie closer to home
Pollution of its once pristine waters, and illegal fishing, have taken their toll, as winter trips with a biologist and traditional fishermen reveal.
Baikal is 1,600 metres deep and 25 million years old, making it the planet’s deepest and oldest lake. It holds more freshwater than any other: nearly 24,000 cubic kilometres, or about a fifth of the world’s reserves. Despite these staggering dimensions, the body of water performs the same miracle every year, freezing over completely, usually from January until well into May. Both in freezing and thawing, Baikal lags behind the seasons. Its depth makes it slow to heat and cool.
Technically, one needs a licence to fish, but in summer, everybody does it. Despite a prohibition on catching omul, a species of salmon found only in Lake Baikal, most lakeside restaurants have it on the menu. There are also strict quotas on harvesting nerpas, one of the planet’s few species of freshwater seals, but market vendors along the shore have glasses full of white seal fat on offer.
Russian Cossacks annexed Lake Baikal for the rapidly expanding tsarist empire in the 17th century. At that time, Moscow’s emissaries negotiated a border treaty with China, which had previously controlled the area, and that border essentially still separates Russia from Mongolia and China’s Heilongjiang province.
Ask Chinese tourists, who have been visiting Lake Baikal in increasing numbers over the past few years, and few are aware of the lake’s political history. They say that the exchange rate is favourable, the landscape is beautiful, and it’s only a three-hour flight from Beijing. Some cite a song that made the lake popular in China, a love ballad by singer Li Jian: The day will come / When you suddenly stand before me / As clear and yet as mysterious / As Lake Baikal.
2019 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd.