Lake or ocean: where strong waves, storms and tides come from on Lake Baikal? On September 9, 2007, the “Holy Russia” balloon with the traveler Valentin Efremov and the explorer Vladimir Isaychev on board will try to fly over the anomalous zone of Lake Baikal, the so-called “Bermuda Triangle” of Lake Baikal.
and in the past years several expeditions have tried to unravel the mystery of the anomalous zone of Lake Baikal, but they have gone missing
Those lucky enough to return claimed to have seen strange things, such as glowing balls, huge human-like creatures, sparkling concentric circles. At the same time, many argued that everything they saw was accompanied by a loss in time.
Scientists have been trying to discover the secret of the "enchanted place" for many years. The only thing that we managed to find out is the reason for the danger of finding people in the anomalous zone. Extreme levels of radiation activity have been recorded there. However, the participants in the upcoming trip are confident that they will be able to fly over the lake.
But if you do not think about the terrible consequences of being in this "enchanted place", then it must be admitted that among all the beauties and riches of Siberia, Lake Baikal occupies a special place. This is the greatest mystery of all nature has given us.
Until now, disputes about how Baikal arose - as a result of inevitable slow transformations or because of a monstrous catastrophe and failure in the earth's crust.
This is the deepest lake in the world. The maximum depth is 1637 m, near Cape Izhimei is 1642 m. 23 thousand cubic meters are concentrated in Lake Baikal. km of clean, transparent, fresh, low-mineralized, generously enriched with oxygen, water of unique quality.
First of all, Baikal is unique for its antiquity. It is about 25 million years old. Usually a lake of 10-20 thousand years old is considered old, and Baikal is young, and there are no signs that the lake is starting to age.
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Recent studies have allowed geophysicists to hypothesize that Baikal is an emerging ocean. This is confirmed by the fact that its shores diverge at a rate of up to 2 cm per year, just as the continents of Africa and South America, the shores of the Mediterranean and Red Seas diverge.
The lake has many features inherent in the ocean - great depths, a huge mass of water, internal high waves, tides, strong storms, the expansion of the basin due to the spreading of the shores, large values of magnetic anomalies, etc. We also determined the approximate direction in which the lake expands: to the Sea of Okhotsk and the northern part of Sakhalin Island.
It was hypothesized that Baikal is connected by an underground channel with the Arctic Ocean. This legend arose for two reasons: due to the fact that it is not clear enough how the seal got to Lake Baikal, and due to the presence of a circular current in the middle part of the lake, where fishing nets set in the near-delta areas of the Selenga are most often carried away. However, there is no underground channel, since in this case, according to the law of communicating vessels, the water levels of Lake Baikal and the ocean would equalize.
The world of Baikal is extremely rich, it is a gigantic natural laboratory and a center of speciation. At present, there are 1550 species and varieties of animals and 1085 - plant organisms in Baikal. It is estimated that about 2/3 of the 2635 species of animals and plants found in the lake cannot be found anywhere else in the world. Among them are fish golomyanka, and seal, and omul.
Golomyanki are the most numerous fish in Lake Baikal. In their natural environment, these are exceptionally beautiful fish. The most amazing thing is that the golomyanka does not spawn at all, that is, it is viviparous and does not lay eggs, does not have spawning migrations, as is inherent in all other fish in Lake Baikal. It is extremely difficult to catch it - after all, it does not form fishing and spawning stocks, which means that it cannot be taken with a net and a trawl.
Baikal omul came to Baikal relatively recently (during the Ice Age or Post-Glacial Period), presumably from estuarine sections of rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean, in particular from the Yenisei and Angara.
The Baikal seal is the only representative of mammals in the lake. It is believed that the seal penetrated from the Arctic Ocean along the Yenisei and Angara in the Ice Age, when the rivers were dammed up by ice advancing from the north.
Another unique feature of Lake Baikal is due to phytoplankton. It is phytoplankton that determines the state of the rest of the "population": microorganisms, plants and animals. Phytoplankton - microalgae - release about 3 million tons of organic matter from their cells annually. These substances inhibit the growth of bacteria.
The indigenous Baikal species of algae impart high biological activity to the Baikal water.
Baikal has powerful self-cleaning defense mechanisms. Even significant inputs of heavy metals into the lake (for example, in case of man-made accidents) can be neutralized in 3-4 months.
Zooplankton also plays a significant role in the formation of clean Baikal water, filtering the lake water when feeding.
Baikal is a giant heat accumulator. Throughout the summer, it actively absorbs heat, and in winter it gives it back to the atmosphere. As a result of frosty soaring, thick fogs can occur on the cold days of November and December. All seasons on the coast of the lake and above its waters are shifted by a month. And the sharply continental climate of Siberia is largely smoothed out, becomes softer, more "sea". Summer on Lake Baikal is about 5 degrees cooler, and frosty Siberian winter - just as warm.