World’s deepest lake in peril, scientists warn

The shoreline of Lake Baikal covered by rotting Spirogyra algae. -AFP/Russian Academy of Sciences' Limnological Institute/Oleg Timoshkin/file

MOSCOW: Lake Baikal is undergoing its gravest crisis in recent history, experts say, as the government bans the catching of a signature fish that has lived in the world’s deepest lake for centuries but is now under threat.

Holding one-fifth of the world’s unfrozen fresh water, Baikal in Russia’s Siberia is a natural wonder of “exceptional value to evolutionary science” meriting its listing as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.