Category Archives: Baikal Posts

Happy Birthday, Valentin Grigoriyevich Rasputin–born 15 March 1937

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Happy Birthday, Valentin Rasputin!
Valentin Rasputin was born March 15, 1937.

from “Siberia, Siberia”:

“The normal concept of beauty fits Baikal least of all. What we take for beauty is an impression of a different type, like something that hangs above the horizon of our sensitivity, No matter how often you’ve been to Baikal, no matter how well you know it, each new encounter is unexpected and requires effort on your part. Each time you seemingly have to raise yourself to a certain height again and again in order to be on the same plane, in order to see and hear it.
Not everything, as we know, has a name. It’s impossible to give a name to the regeneration that occurs in people when they’re near Baikal. There’s no need to remind anyone that for this to take place a person must have a soul. And here stands and looks around, is filled with something and carried off somewhere, and can’t understand what’s happening to him. Like a fetus in it’s mother’s womb, he passes through all the evolutionary stages of human development and, spellbound by the ancient, mighty unfolding of this miracle, he experiences the timeless tidal feeling of the powers that created humankind. ….”

About this site

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A few words about this  new site:

This site is intended to reflect my love for Lake Baikal.

You can find out more about why i even feel this way about Lake Baikal when I update my “about me” page.  For now, there will be about 3 main categories of posts:

–Baikal Posts

as the name suggests, these are posts that have something to do with Lake Baikal.

–Russia News

the posts here are posts that i have found  of news coming out of Russia. This category might also contain original articles about current events in Russia.

–Spotlight on:

this category will contain- at least weekly but quite possibly daily- features about something interesting or important that I think you, awesome reader, should know about.

All of these categories would warmly welcome comments!

There are lots of other little side(bar) trips you can take along the way on your journey to and through Lake Baikal. So, please stay tuned ….and welcome!

heather

A little about Lake Baikal

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Lake Baikal is phenomenal.

Let me introduce you. The “Sacred Sea” is located in south central Siberia(that’s in Russia) just above the Mongolian border. It is a crescent moon-shaped “ladle” filled with 20% of the Planet Earth’s fresh water.  Lake Baikal contains more water than  in all the North American Great Lakes combined.  About 336 rivers and streams flow into Lake Baikal but only one river flows out-the Angara River, located on Baikal’s NW shore. If all of the inflow to Baikal were to suddenly stop, it would take over 300 years to drain it.   Clearly, Baikal is mighty.

O.K. But that doesn’t even begin to tell it.   Baikal is ANCIENT. 25 million years old ancient.  Wait….think about that.   Twenty. Five. Million. Years. OLD.  See, this is where one starts to get goose bumps just thinking about Baikal sitting there…hearing that silence that was there 25 million years ago.  And Baikal still possesses it- it is a part of the lake and is there for us to hear it like a giant seashell that, when held to ear, imparts the songs and wisdom of the sea to its audience,  Baikal has that silent wisdom to impart.  I know because i have heard it- i still hear it because it never leaves the heart that hears it.  You can almost imagine that Baikal has one leg in the past, so to speak, and one leg in the present (or future).  Simply put, Lake Baikal is not just water.

So Baikal also has a whole bunch of lucky creatures that carry with them the past wisdom, the silent patience.  In fact, Baikal has about 1500 species  of plants and animals with about 80% of them endemic to Lake Baikal (they exist nowhere else on the planet! just at Baikal).  One if the standouts is the Nerpa…..

Baikal microbes could help clean up oil spills.

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Baikal microbes could help clean up oil spills.

from the Telegraph U.K.:

Oil spills could be cleaned up with the help of organisms that grow at the bottom of the world’s deepest lake, scientists hope.

Last Updated: 5:12PM GMT 01 Jan 2009

They are investigating how microbes ‘eat’ naturally occurring crude oil that seeps into the bottom of Lake Baikal in Siberia.

Dr Mikhail Grachyov, an expert on the flora and fauna of the 5,400ft-deep lake, said: “Baikal has microbes that absorb this oil so it does not spread through the lake. This could have huge implications for environmental disasters.”

The scientists believe that the microbes convert the crude oil into methane and other by-products, but they do not yet understand how.

Dr Grachyov said: “It is important that we study these processes more thoroughly.”

Samples that were gathered in two mini-submarines will be analysed over the coming years.

In 1996, hundreds of sea birds were killed along with fish and other marine wildlife when the Sea Empress oil tanker ran aground off the Pembrokeshire coast, spilling 72,000 tonnes of crude.

Dr David Santillo, senior scientist with the Greenpeace Research Laboratories at the University of Exeter, said: “Further investigation of these unusual microbial communities in Lake Baikal will be valuable.

“However, while microbial action might help deal with some oil spills, we need to place far more emphasis on preventing such spills from happening in the first place.”
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please take a look at my old site here to read posts that came before this.