Lake Baikal
From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lake Baikal is a very big lake in Siberia. Siberia is part of Russia. Lake Baikal is the biggest fresh water reservoir in the world. The lake is near Irkutsk. It is about 636 km long, between 20 km and 80 km wide, and at its deepest point it is 1.6 km deep.
The lake is very special. There are fish in the lake that only exist here and nowhere else in the world. One such fish is called Omul. It is a kind of trout.
[edit] Wildlife
Lake Baikal hosts 1085 species of plants and 1550 species and varieties of animals. Over 60% of animals are endemic; e.g., of 52 species of fish 27 are endemic.
Of note is an endemic subspecies of the omul fish (Coregonus autumnalis migratorius). It is fished, smoked, and sold on all markets around the lake. For many travellers on the Trans-Siberian railway, purchasing smoked omul is one of the highlights of the long journey.
Baikal also hosts a species of seals, Baikal seal or nerpa.
