Lake Baikal

One of the jewels of Russia is Lake Baikal: this massive lake in the Russian Far East holds 20% of the world's water. The lake is over 1.5 kilometers in depth and is the deepest lake in the world. The Moscow Times has published a fascinating piece examining the ecology of Baikal. The lake is home to a number of species found nowhere else, and one of the important denizens of this lake is its miniature shrimp that filter the lake's water:

Baikal does pull off a unique miracle of self-purification -- through its miniature shrimp, the Epischura baicalensis. These animals strain pollution from the water like "a tiny vacuum cleaner about the size of a poppy seed." Baikal's zillions of shrimp filter "the lake's entire volume every twenty-three years." Thus "Baikal is in a perfect state!" one scientist announces. "It is huge, it is rich, it is healthy, it is wise, and it is not similar to any phenomena in the world!"

Thomson is wary. "Baikal is perfect," he thinks. "It's a wonderful, soothing story, which exalts the lake even as it frees humans from their responsibility to care for it."

Unfortunately, the Soviet Union in its haste to industrialize contributed to the growing pollution of Lake Baikal. The Soviet industry continues to pollute the lake. According to the Moscow Times:

Indeed, many others warn Thomson that "waste from factories, farms, and human settlements is testing the limits of Baikal's delicate ecology." Siberian industry helped spearhead the nation's economic and technological achievements of the 1960s and 1970s. Three dams on the Angara River produced electricity for aluminum, petrochemical and airplane factories -- all within 50 kilometers of Baikal. The result is a "contaminated hot zone." The region has been deemed "irreparably damaged" by the Rand Corporation. A Soviet government study found that in 1988 the city of Angarsk produced more harmful air pollution than all of Moscow, and the government recently admitted that Irkutsk and nearby cities have some of the poorest air quality in the nation.

For more information on Lake Baikal: Sacred Sea: A Journey to Lake Baikal by Peter Thomson and published by Oxford University Press in 2007.