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Russian sub reaches bottom of world's deepest lake

30 July 2008

A Russian deepwater vehicle has reached the bottom of the world's deepest freshwater lake, setting a record for the deepest dive in a lake.

Russian media agency Itar-Tass reported this morning that the manned vehicle Mir-2 touched the bottom of Lake Baikal at a depth of 1,680 metres at 10:15 local time.

The Mir-1 vehicle is also reported to have reached the same depth.

The mission was designed to gather more scientific information about life in the lake and the Mirs spent two hours exploring and taking soil samples.

According to Itar-Tass, onboard Mir-1 was a crew including Mikhail Slipenchuk, head of Metropol; the company which funded the mission and supports the preservation of the lake.

The crew of the Mir-2 includes Duma lawmaker Vladimir Gruzdev and the director of the Baikal Institute of Nature Use under the Russian Academy of Sciences, Arnold Tulokhonov.

Situated in south-east Siberia, Lake Baikal contains one fifth of the world's total unfrozen freshwater reserve and is the world's oldest lake at 25 million years old.

Unesco named it as a World Heritage site in 1996 due to its "outstanding variety of endemic flora and fauna, which is of exceptional value to evolutionary science".