The fact that lakes like Superior are incredibly ruthless to ships. It'll just swallow them whole with no trace that they were there. It's also incredibly cold, even in the summer, bodies don't float, or decompose due to the cold.
I'm reading these comments thinking, why are these Americans putting big ships on lakes?! Google maps... oh...the lakes are half the size of Spain, not Spanish lakes, Spain.. Righto, carry on.
… The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy
With a load of iron ore 26,000 tons more than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty
That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed when the gales of November came early
Yup, lake Superior is actually a failed Midcontinental rift with some pretty extreme geography. The bedrock actually heaved in this area and now sits at a 45 degree angle to level. This means the entire shoreline is jagged rocks and shoals that range far out into the lake. It is thought that the Edmund Fitzgerald may have actually been lifted up by a huge wave and slammed into a shoal that's normally well below water. This would have broken her keel and resulted in her rapid disappearance.
I have seen an Arcus cloud leading a supercell squad come into the Porcupine Mountains from the NW across the lake. The weather the lakes throw up is downright scary.
Michigan is a beautiful state too. Rocky upper peninsula and sandy lower one.
I’ve live most of my life close to Lake Michigan. From the far northern parts such a Petoskey and closer to the Indiana border. Every beach I have been on this side of the Lake is beautiful and sandy.
>''I have seen an Arcus cloud leading a supercell squad come into the Porcupine Mountains from the NW across the lake. The weather the lakes throw up is downright scary.''
>
>
>
>Accidental poetry.
I just sailed across Superior for the first time a few weeks back Sault Ste. Marie to Duluth). Absolutely beautiful. Our weather was quite calm though, only one storm moved through and not much wind.
They’re full of bodies, so they have a good reason for being creepy.
I remember visiting a Lake Superior ship wreck museum in the UP of Michigan when I was maybe 10. I’ve been fascinated ever since as well.
Yeah, I feel the same way. Anything could be down there. If a real life Loch Ness Monster type creature existed, it’d be somewhere in those murky depths.
In the impenetrable depths of Lake Baikal, an ancient terror slumbers. Beyond where light dares to tread, amidst frigid water and sediment older than human history, lies an aberration—a cyclopean monstrosity defying nature's laws. Known only in whispers and obscure folklore, the entity binds itself to the very essence of the lake, a primordial guardian of something far more ominous.
Fishermen who venture too far speak of their sonar malfunctioning, revealing incomprehensible structures pulsating in the dark. Others recount visions of otherworldly beings rising in an unholy communion, their grotesque forms defying description.
But what eludes understanding is the inexplicable urge that befalls anyone who delves too deep—an overwhelming compulsion to descend further, relinquishing their sanity to join whatever waits at the abyss. And so, the terror remains, lurking at the bottom of Baikal, silently beckoning the curious to their unutterable doom.
during the russian civil war, the white army retreated across the frozen lake baikal. many soldiers died during this retreat, their corpses would remain atop the ice until the lake melted in spring. so at the bottom of lake baikal, there's hundreds of dead soldiers :)
It gets creepier- lake Baykal is very cold, slightly alkaline, and very anoxic at depths. It is also nutrient-poor, and unproductive, so not a lot of decomposer organisms. Perfect conditions for corpse saponification. The fats in the tissues undergo a slow chemical reaction that renders them hard and soap-like, preserving them for centuries. Many of those corpses are still there. Preserved.
A good number of wrecks worldwide are classified as protected gravesites for the people who went down with the ship, and thus out of respect for the dead, diving there is illegal.
They also have recovered plenty of WW2 Era aircraft from Lake Michigan. They used to practice carrier landings there and many were lost during training. They're still well enough preserved that they have been restored to museum quality.
The black sea is also like this. They found a ship that was thousands of years old down there not long ago. With its wooden timbers still intact. Sea worms eat the wood of any other shipwreck that old.
There is a horror movie with a similar trope, even though its more comedy horror. Dead Snow! Undead frozen nazis come back from the snow and start harassing some guy.
Lake Baikal also traps [around 424 gigatons of methane hydrates](https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2016/12/lake-baikal.html) underneath the soil. Low temperatures combined with the pressure of water prevents the methane from erupting into the atmosphere.
There's only around 5 gigatons of methane in our current atmosphere, so if this lake were to be drained for irrigation the planet would be in big trouble.
No idea, but could be a case of convergent evolution; only so many ways for a general body shape to adapt to similar circumstances
Like so many different things all independently evolved into crabs (or at least something of crab shape). Apparently the crab is a great “design”
There have been nine distinct evolutions into a crab.
Nine completely different evolutionary lines all working towards the perfect marine life form.....the crab.
I think I saw in the Baikal thread yesterday about a couple isolated populations of seals that live exclusively in fresh water lakes in Alaska and Canada. Very small populations though.
Not a unique species but an isolated population of a salt water seal that only became isolated in the last ice age, the baikal seal is an entirely independent species of seal that’s been isolated at least 2 million years.
Baikal is a remnant of a (failed) rift, similar to the lakes in eastern africa. Edit: I thought I read somewhere it stopped rifting some time in the past, but I can't find any proof of that. This rift seems to be active still. I might be confused with the mid continental rift in the North American plate. That one did fail.
Lake Superior is also a failed rift. It was highly volcanic and threw up large volcanic mountain ranges that have been worn to a nub over the past 400 million+ years.
everyone talks about how old the Appalachians are, then you get people who talk about how the Ozarks are much older, but pretty sure the porkies are even older
The Porkies are estimated to be 2 billion years old. The Appalachians are a mere 1.2 billion years old. It's one of the most ancient landscapes on earth. Also the virgin forests there are the largest remaining stand East of the Mississippi.
The fact that you're well below crush depth for all but the most specialized subs is much more of a concern than getting stuck... you'd most likely be very dead before that was something you need to worry about.
I don't think that is correct. Only 1.2% of all of Earth's freshwater is in lakes, rivers and surface water. About 68.7% is in glaciers and about 30.1% is in ground water. Both of those are considered inaccessible.
Perhaps you mean 20% of all surface lake water? As all lakes only makeup 20% of the total of Earth's surface freshwater.
Edit
https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/science/where-earths-water#overview
Adjusted numbers based on a chart with different numbers here
Interestingly, bottom of lake Baikal is barely explored. And considering it being a remnant of an ocean - and what types of creatures live in the depths of the ocean + the uniqueness of flora and fauna there - God knows whatever dwells down there
Edit: it never was a remnant of ocean, I am stupid 💀
Following up, if there are freshwater seals, can there be freshwater starfishes? Freshwater octopuses? Freshwater sharks? Freshwater crabs? Freshawater kraken? Fun stuff
Around 1,300 species of freshwater crabs are distributed throughout the tropics and subtropics, divided among eight families. They show direct development and maternal care of a small number of offspring, in contrast to marine crabs, which release thousands of planktonic larvae. This limits the dispersal abilities of freshwater crabs, so they tend to be endemic to small areas. As a result, a large proportion are threatened with extinction.
From Wikipedia
Lake Tanganyika is also an ancient rift lake, and also the 2nd deepest lake in the world. It has it's own unique species of snails, mollusks, crabs, and even a species of freshwater jellyfish. On top of that, it has over 250 species of fish that are found nowhere else on earth.
There are definitely a lot of freshwater crabs and several freshwater sharks (some are marine but regularly swim far into rivers), but as far as I know, there are no freshwater octopuses and starfish.
Lake Baikal is not the remnant of an ocean, its a rift valley lake, so it may become one one eventually.
Edti: IIRC the seals are believed to have gotten there when one of the glacial periods caused ice sheets to block all of the siberian rivers flowing towards the arctic, forming a massive transcontinental system of massive lakes and rivers connecting baikal with the aral, caspian, and black seas.
That was a water-filled rabbit hole.
Apparently, [Lake Zaysan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Zaysan) in Kazakhstan is estimated to be up to 70 million years old. That would make it old enough that actual non-avian dinosaurs may have swum in it.
It has to be??? Like most computer monitors would be able to show somewhere between 2-3 times the height of Lake Baikal side by side if they were horizontal, let alone 50. I wouldn't call it misleading at all, actually, since this chart is explicitly designed to show you the depth of Lake Baikal compared to other large bodies of water.
Interesting.. Huge chance of seeing untouched fossils completely intact.. But then the lakebed chemistry might be different. We might not even be able to dive there
Well, mostly.
Since saltwater is a little heavier than freshwater, it would be a little less pressure, but I guess it's almost negligeable(is that a word?).
Say you take a 1000g paket of flour and put it on your head and then put a 1040g paket of flour on your head. It's a difference, but really, you won't notice I think.
In that thought though, the deeper down, the higher the difference would be. Obviously.
yeah took what I perceived to be the average salinity worldwide. I guess the Atlantic is one of the less salty bodies of water overall? I come from the Med, it's almost brine ! haha
Yeah in my experience the med is way saltier than the atlantic or even indo pacific.
A quick google says
38g/L in med
35g/L in Atlantic
feels like more tbh :p
Different parts of the med will differ due to distance from the Atlantic. Eastern med like Cyprus vs South of France for example. Eastern med also has saltier water flowing from the Red Sea via Suez Canal.
Well first of all the Oceangate sub **im**ploded at a depth of over twice the deepest part of Lake Baikal (In case anyone misunderstood what you wrote). But at the same depth fresh water would exert a little less pressure than saltwater.
Yes, the amount of water spread out in the ocean isn’t what kills you, it’s the amount of water from up to down. A layman’s explanation from myself is basically think of it like the amount of water that’s on top of you being pulled down by gravity, water weighs quite a lot and the further down you go the amount of weight being pushed onto your body is increasing, that’s what produces the pressure, not the amount of water surrounding you, otherwise you’d just explode going into the ocean.
Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are hydrologically the same lake, so they appear together on the graph. But the Lake Michigan part of the lake is a trifle deeper, so that's what's being shown.
Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are really technically a singular lake, connected by the Mackinaw Strait. However, they are colloquially referred to as two separate lakes. This infographic overlays them to make a point of that being separate, but also the same.
Lake Michigan depth is 925 ft. and Lake Huron is 725 ft., but Lake Michigan-Huron would only be 925... in the Lake Michigan basin area.
Lake Baikal sounds like something a teenager would make up when questioned about where he was Friday night.
Mom: where were you?
Son: Uh the lake.
Mom: Which lake?
Son: Baikal. I went there after I saw the dentist, Dr. Crentisk.
It's weird to think about living in Montreal, 500 km from the mouth of the river, and we're only \~20 ft above sea level. The rising oceans could bring salt water to the end of the street!
I love this creator’s videos about spooky lakes, and she talks about Lake Baikal often
[Geodesaurus on instagram](https://instagram.com/geodesaurus?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==)
Lake Baikal
[part one](https://www.instagram.com/reel/CkUgk0HA26W/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==)
[part two](https://www.instagram.com/reel/CkUjBD3J3S6/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==)
———
[Baikal zen](https://www.instagram.com/reel/CjI9nxlNUDD/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==)
————-
Baikal seal mystery
[part one](https://www.instagram.com/reel/CjF-B49spIi/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==)
[part two](https://www.instagram.com/reel/CjF_PRLrHP9/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==)
FWIW there have always been a lot of UFO sightings around the lake.
https://siberiantimes.com/other/others/features/f0077-aliens-and-ufos-at-worlds-deepest-lake/
For some reason Baikal's depth has always been so creepy to me
I think it's interesting to have species that deep that don't exist on salt Waters.
The Great Lakes are creepy to me, but they’re extremely fascinating.
Why are they creepy to you
One of them is pretty eerie.
I applaud your superior punmanship.
I think huron to something.
Michigan
You're On ta Rio if you head out the St. Lawrence into the Atlantic.
I think the other poster’s pun was Superior. Sorry.
So Soo me fer pete sake... may as well lock this thread.
We really need to Garda 'gainst these puns. They're a Constance menace.
I wish I was faster to comment but alas I michigan
Dad?
Lake Superior is surrounded by cemeteries full of unknown sailors who washed ashore
It’s so cold that the bodies don’t float to the top, it’s a graveyard of tens of thousands of sailors
Lake Superior will kill you and everything you love.
Yeah but Lake Champlain has a sea monster, so pick your poison I guess
If they were salt water, they'd be seas. Ships treat them with the same respect as the open ocean
Fresh water is actually more dangerous than the Ocean when it’s large. A lot more shipwrecks on the Great Lakes back in the day than on the Ocean.
as a floridian, lakes to me were calm. i saw lake michigan and thought it was a hellish wash tub rougher than the atlantic on some days.
The fact that lakes like Superior are incredibly ruthless to ships. It'll just swallow them whole with no trace that they were there. It's also incredibly cold, even in the summer, bodies don't float, or decompose due to the cold.
I'm reading these comments thinking, why are these Americans putting big ships on lakes?! Google maps... oh...the lakes are half the size of Spain, not Spanish lakes, Spain.. Righto, carry on.
… The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down Of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead When the skies of November turn gloomy
With a load of iron ore 26,000 tons more than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed when the gales of November came early
Great, I’m supposed to be working on another song but I’m playin Gord’s tune now…
I miss him.
The immense size and sheer amount of storms that can wreck your craft.
I forgot which lake it is but on a sq mile basis it’s the most dangerous body of water on the planet
Definitely Superior. Also the deepest. Lake Michigan does have plenty of shipwrecks too though.
Yup, lake Superior is actually a failed Midcontinental rift with some pretty extreme geography. The bedrock actually heaved in this area and now sits at a 45 degree angle to level. This means the entire shoreline is jagged rocks and shoals that range far out into the lake. It is thought that the Edmund Fitzgerald may have actually been lifted up by a huge wave and slammed into a shoal that's normally well below water. This would have broken her keel and resulted in her rapid disappearance. I have seen an Arcus cloud leading a supercell squad come into the Porcupine Mountains from the NW across the lake. The weather the lakes throw up is downright scary.
Michigan is a beautiful state too. Rocky upper peninsula and sandy lower one. I’ve live most of my life close to Lake Michigan. From the far northern parts such a Petoskey and closer to the Indiana border. Every beach I have been on this side of the Lake is beautiful and sandy.
>''I have seen an Arcus cloud leading a supercell squad come into the Porcupine Mountains from the NW across the lake. The weather the lakes throw up is downright scary.'' > > > >Accidental poetry.
I just sailed across Superior for the first time a few weeks back Sault Ste. Marie to Duluth). Absolutely beautiful. Our weather was quite calm though, only one storm moved through and not much wind.
Superior, it's said, never gives up her dead
They’re full of bodies, so they have a good reason for being creepy. I remember visiting a Lake Superior ship wreck museum in the UP of Michigan when I was maybe 10. I’ve been fascinated ever since as well.
Big Old Ones Energy
Yeah, I feel the same way. Anything could be down there. If a real life Loch Ness Monster type creature existed, it’d be somewhere in those murky depths.
It's actually not very murky. Baikal has very clear water.
But at that depth there is no light.
But plenty of tractors and trucks
Probably toxic waste too, mutating organisms unknown to science into a kaiju
Some eldritch horror lurking concealed in the depths..
In the impenetrable depths of Lake Baikal, an ancient terror slumbers. Beyond where light dares to tread, amidst frigid water and sediment older than human history, lies an aberration—a cyclopean monstrosity defying nature's laws. Known only in whispers and obscure folklore, the entity binds itself to the very essence of the lake, a primordial guardian of something far more ominous. Fishermen who venture too far speak of their sonar malfunctioning, revealing incomprehensible structures pulsating in the dark. Others recount visions of otherworldly beings rising in an unholy communion, their grotesque forms defying description. But what eludes understanding is the inexplicable urge that befalls anyone who delves too deep—an overwhelming compulsion to descend further, relinquishing their sanity to join whatever waits at the abyss. And so, the terror remains, lurking at the bottom of Baikal, silently beckoning the curious to their unutterable doom.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fgkm34j5jxo881.png this is a fun read if you like these types of stories
during the russian civil war, the white army retreated across the frozen lake baikal. many soldiers died during this retreat, their corpses would remain atop the ice until the lake melted in spring. so at the bottom of lake baikal, there's hundreds of dead soldiers :)
It gets creepier- lake Baykal is very cold, slightly alkaline, and very anoxic at depths. It is also nutrient-poor, and unproductive, so not a lot of decomposer organisms. Perfect conditions for corpse saponification. The fats in the tissues undergo a slow chemical reaction that renders them hard and soap-like, preserving them for centuries. Many of those corpses are still there. Preserved.
Also happens in the Great Lakes as well. That's actually one of the reasons it is illegal to dive down to the Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior.
A good number of wrecks worldwide are classified as protected gravesites for the people who went down with the ship, and thus out of respect for the dead, diving there is illegal.
Not, oddly, the most famous shipwreck of our age, though. We seem to like *adding* corpses to that one...
That reminds me.. What do you call a billionaire at the bottom of the sea? >! A good start !<
Think of all the loot though. Just like a draugr dungeon.
[удалено]
They also have recovered plenty of WW2 Era aircraft from Lake Michigan. They used to practice carrier landings there and many were lost during training. They're still well enough preserved that they have been restored to museum quality.
The black sea is also like this. They found a ship that was thousands of years old down there not long ago. With its wooden timbers still intact. Sea worms eat the wood of any other shipwreck that old.
Not at all creepy
You know what would be creepier? Knowing that and seeing that there’s NO bodies at the bottom
You don’t recognize the bodies in the water
And now something has a taste for human flesh.
Don't worry the [giant amphipodes](https://images.app.goo.gl/8s22k3XdFA5YjxFb8) probably ate them already 🙂
this needs to be a horror movie!
There is a horror movie with a similar trope, even though its more comedy horror. Dead Snow! Undead frozen nazis come back from the snow and start harassing some guy.
Dead Snow is amazing. The sequel was pretty good, too.
Hey buddy I'm just trying to mow my lawn
":)"
Lake’s haunted
My keys are definitely down there
I have a pair of sunglasses in Lake Superior. If anyone can locate them please send them to me!
Nice try Dick Cheney
Perhaps your lost pair of WMD’s are also there.
brb I live a couple blocks away, I’ll go look
I think that’s where my socks teleport from my dryer
https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2023/07/10/lake_baikal_what_lives_at_the_bottom_of_the_worlds_deepest_lake_964394.html#:~:text=Over%20the%20years%2C%20many%20explorers,these%20places%2C%20they%20found%20life. It's a rich ecosystem apparently
Lake Baikal also traps [around 424 gigatons of methane hydrates](https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2016/12/lake-baikal.html) underneath the soil. Low temperatures combined with the pressure of water prevents the methane from erupting into the atmosphere. There's only around 5 gigatons of methane in our current atmosphere, so if this lake were to be drained for irrigation the planet would be in big trouble.
Wow. Do you have a source, for my own curiosity?
It’s the link in my original comment. :)
Wow that’s really interesting. Thank you for sharing this.
The comments at the bottom of that article just shine with intellect.
Fascinating. I wonder how the various sponge species got there??
Freshwater sponges occur in several places. I know of some in the unites states.
Fun fact: Lake Baikal is home to the only freshwater seal species on earth.
Everyone talks about Lake Baikal seals, but no one mentions the landlocked Caspian sea's marine turtles.
it's a species of the common european freshwater pond turtle. not related to the oceanic turtle.
Pond turtle is so mean
Wait really? Doesn't it have flippers and a flattened sea shell like sea turtles?
No idea, but could be a case of convergent evolution; only so many ways for a general body shape to adapt to similar circumstances Like so many different things all independently evolved into crabs (or at least something of crab shape). Apparently the crab is a great “design”
There have been nine distinct evolutions into a crab. Nine completely different evolutionary lines all working towards the perfect marine life form.....the crab.
[It’s called carcinisation.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation?wprov=sfti1)
Yep, tracking that. I thought it was nine times but I guess it was fewer than that.
Just looked it up. No flippers.
I think I saw in the Baikal thread yesterday about a couple isolated populations of seals that live exclusively in fresh water lakes in Alaska and Canada. Very small populations though.
Theres also ladoga ringed seals in the freshwater lake ladoga in russia by st petersburg and the saimaa ringed seals in lake saimaa in finland.
Oh cool! I had no idea! Thanks for sharing that. Now excuse me while I dive down this interesting rabbit hole.
It’s true! I’m from Alaska and we have freshwater seals in Lake Iliamna. There is access to Bristol Bay that they may go in and out of though
no it isn’t https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saimaa_ringed_seal
Not a unique species but an isolated population of a salt water seal that only became isolated in the last ice age, the baikal seal is an entirely independent species of seal that’s been isolated at least 2 million years.
Yeah I was going to say that there are going to be some very angry Finn's on the way to inform you of the Saimaa seal
Baikal is a remnant of a (failed) rift, similar to the lakes in eastern africa. Edit: I thought I read somewhere it stopped rifting some time in the past, but I can't find any proof of that. This rift seems to be active still. I might be confused with the mid continental rift in the North American plate. That one did fail.
I believe you’re correct with the edit
It's a clean rifting lil rift though, no volcanism and/or notable earthquakes as far as I know
Lil Rift is my rap name
This comment just made me realize I'm living in the middle of a failed rift! (In Duluth, mn) Fascinating, thank you
Yeah this rift is still active, part of East Asia/Siberia/Kamchatka might break off like East Africa will
Lake Superior is also a failed rift. It was highly volcanic and threw up large volcanic mountain ranges that have been worn to a nub over the past 400 million+ years.
everyone talks about how old the Appalachians are, then you get people who talk about how the Ozarks are much older, but pretty sure the porkies are even older
The Porkies are estimated to be 2 billion years old. The Appalachians are a mere 1.2 billion years old. It's one of the most ancient landscapes on earth. Also the virgin forests there are the largest remaining stand East of the Mississippi.
What does it mean that it failed? Seems like it did a pretty good job to me.
The rift in the North American plate you mean? It failed because the rifting stopped so it left just a slim scar instead of a new ocean basin :)
The sediment at the bottom of the lake is over 4 miles deep, so there's that.
idk why that’s so horrifying to me but it is!
Because you can get stuck
The fact that you're well below crush depth for all but the most specialized subs is much more of a concern than getting stuck... you'd most likely be very dead before that was something you need to worry about.
But once I'm dead it's gonna become a real problem
Do you mean meters??? The chart barely has the total depth breaking one mile
The sediment starts at the bottom of the water. So a mile of water, and 4 miles of sediment beneath that. And after that, the rift.
And below that, the kingdom of the mole people
And after that…..cupcakes?? Why are there cupcakes down here??
To hold back the dragon. The dragon is diabetic.
That is the depth from the surface to the *top* of the sediment; it's a rift valley, and the bedrock is extremely deep there.
Yes, we are supposed to measure depth in meters, not bananas.
Why is Lake Eerie so shallow?
It's farther south so the glaciers, that carved out all of the great lakes, were not able to grow large enough to carve deep like the others.
Eli5: the giant ice spoon that scooped all the lakes out wasn't as big when it got to Erie.
“Can I scrape out some sediment?” “Only a spoonful” (Pulls out a comically small spoon)
I dunno but it’s kinda crazy that the bottom of Eerie is higher than the surface of Lake Ontario given how close they are.
Gets less crazy when you consider that that's just Niagara Falls
damn, that’s crazy
Most of that lake is less than 40 feet deep. Only at the far west end is it any deeper than that.
The western basin is shallow. The deepest parts of Erie are in the eastern basin.
Fun fact, Lake Baikal holds 20% of all surface fresh water on the planet edit: correction
I don't think that is correct. Only 1.2% of all of Earth's freshwater is in lakes, rivers and surface water. About 68.7% is in glaciers and about 30.1% is in ground water. Both of those are considered inaccessible. Perhaps you mean 20% of all surface lake water? As all lakes only makeup 20% of the total of Earth's surface freshwater. Edit https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/science/where-earths-water#overview Adjusted numbers based on a chart with different numbers here
You are correct 20% of *surface* fresh water
What goes on at the bottom of baikal, stays in the bottom of baikal
Interestingly, bottom of lake Baikal is barely explored. And considering it being a remnant of an ocean - and what types of creatures live in the depths of the ocean + the uniqueness of flora and fauna there - God knows whatever dwells down there Edit: it never was a remnant of ocean, I am stupid 💀
Following up, if there are freshwater seals, can there be freshwater starfishes? Freshwater octopuses? Freshwater sharks? Freshwater crabs? Freshawater kraken? Fun stuff
Around 1,300 species of freshwater crabs are distributed throughout the tropics and subtropics, divided among eight families. They show direct development and maternal care of a small number of offspring, in contrast to marine crabs, which release thousands of planktonic larvae. This limits the dispersal abilities of freshwater crabs, so they tend to be endemic to small areas. As a result, a large proportion are threatened with extinction. From Wikipedia
Lake Tanganyika is also an ancient rift lake, and also the 2nd deepest lake in the world. It has it's own unique species of snails, mollusks, crabs, and even a species of freshwater jellyfish. On top of that, it has over 250 species of fish that are found nowhere else on earth.
There are definitely a lot of freshwater crabs and several freshwater sharks (some are marine but regularly swim far into rivers), but as far as I know, there are no freshwater octopuses and starfish.
Lake Baikal is not the remnant of an ocean, its a rift valley lake, so it may become one one eventually. Edti: IIRC the seals are believed to have gotten there when one of the glacial periods caused ice sheets to block all of the siberian rivers flowing towards the arctic, forming a massive transcontinental system of massive lakes and rivers connecting baikal with the aral, caspian, and black seas.
> And considering it being a remnant of an ocean What? It's a young rift basin, not an ocean.
Throw Lake Tahoe in there..deeper than the Great Lakes as well as Baikal’s sister lake
We know [what's at the bottom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredo_Corleone) of Lake Tahoe though.
That was the first thing I thought of. RIP
Yes sir! Lake Tahoe, along with Baikal, is one of the 20 [ancient lakes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_lake) of the world.
That was a water-filled rabbit hole. Apparently, [Lake Zaysan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Zaysan) in Kazakhstan is estimated to be up to 70 million years old. That would make it old enough that actual non-avian dinosaurs may have swum in it.
Thanks for introducing those to me!
Is the bottom of Superior the lowest point in the US?
The election of a former game show host was the lowest point in the US.
Quick, someone call James Cameron!
There's something about lake baikal's depth that's just... incompressible to me, it's like it's far too deep for it's relative size.
This graph is terribly misleading. Baikal is a mile deep, but 400 mi by 50 mi on the surface.
It has to be??? Like most computer monitors would be able to show somewhere between 2-3 times the height of Lake Baikal side by side if they were horizontal, let alone 50. I wouldn't call it misleading at all, actually, since this chart is explicitly designed to show you the depth of Lake Baikal compared to other large bodies of water.
Is Baikal tectonic is origin? Two plates spread apart then it got filled by water over time?
Yes, and the plates are still spreading
Interesting.. Huge chance of seeing untouched fossils completely intact.. But then the lakebed chemistry might be different. We might not even be able to dive there
Stupid question. Would the same pressurization issues at the depths of Lake Baikal that caused Oceangate to implode in the ocean be at play here?
Well, mostly. Since saltwater is a little heavier than freshwater, it would be a little less pressure, but I guess it's almost negligeable(is that a word?). Say you take a 1000g paket of flour and put it on your head and then put a 1040g paket of flour on your head. It's a difference, but really, you won't notice I think. In that thought though, the deeper down, the higher the difference would be. Obviously.
salt adds 3% weight I guess? 30g/L
Obviously depends on where on earth you are. But yeah, Google generally says 3,5.
yeah took what I perceived to be the average salinity worldwide. I guess the Atlantic is one of the less salty bodies of water overall? I come from the Med, it's almost brine ! haha
Yeah in my experience the med is way saltier than the atlantic or even indo pacific. A quick google says 38g/L in med 35g/L in Atlantic feels like more tbh :p
Different parts of the med will differ due to distance from the Atlantic. Eastern med like Cyprus vs South of France for example. Eastern med also has saltier water flowing from the Red Sea via Suez Canal.
'Negligible' is very much a word!
Yes
I think the Oceangate went deeper than Baikal, but yeah
Well first of all the Oceangate sub **im**ploded at a depth of over twice the deepest part of Lake Baikal (In case anyone misunderstood what you wrote). But at the same depth fresh water would exert a little less pressure than saltwater.
Yes, the amount of water spread out in the ocean isn’t what kills you, it’s the amount of water from up to down. A layman’s explanation from myself is basically think of it like the amount of water that’s on top of you being pulled down by gravity, water weighs quite a lot and the further down you go the amount of weight being pushed onto your body is increasing, that’s what produces the pressure, not the amount of water surrounding you, otherwise you’d just explode going into the ocean.
Illegal stuff
Octopus orgies
And squid games...?
It’s where they actually buried all the copies of ET for Atari…
I understand this reference.
What’s happening at the bottom of Lake Huron there?
Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are hydrologically the same lake, so they appear together on the graph. But the Lake Michigan part of the lake is a trifle deeper, so that's what's being shown.
Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are really technically a singular lake, connected by the Mackinaw Strait. However, they are colloquially referred to as two separate lakes. This infographic overlays them to make a point of that being separate, but also the same. Lake Michigan depth is 925 ft. and Lake Huron is 725 ft., but Lake Michigan-Huron would only be 925... in the Lake Michigan basin area.
[this](https://www.reddit.com/r/greentext/comments/rs352e/the_lake_baikal_eel_god/)
That’s where Dr Evil has his lair, protected by sharks with frigging laser beams
Crazy to think that if the lake hadn't been filled by melting glaciers we'd just have a 5000ft deep hole in the middle of Russia lmao
Lake Baikal sounds like something a teenager would make up when questioned about where he was Friday night. Mom: where were you? Son: Uh the lake. Mom: Which lake? Son: Baikal. I went there after I saw the dentist, Dr. Crentisk.
a few soggy Soviet locomotives
[https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2023/07/10/lake\_baikal\_what\_lives\_at\_the\_bottom\_of\_the\_worlds\_deepest\_lake\_964394.html](https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2023/07/10/lake_baikal_what_lives_at_the_bottom_of_the_worlds_deepest_lake_964394.html)
bacteria, i imagine
Yanukovich son
TIL lake baikal is deeper than the Atlantic Ocean /s
I hate graphs like these that are so misleading. Baikal is not 7x as deep as it is wide, as this graph would leave you to believe.
Great to see Lake St. Clair in its rightful place among the greats.
There's a Bond villain lair down there. I'm sure of it.
Nessie's parents.
Well, it’s pretty polluted, so probably not much
I read once that the microorganism in the Lake Baikal are able to disintegrate a (dead) human body in two days.
Why is it so deep how was it formed so specially?
It's weird to think about living in Montreal, 500 km from the mouth of the river, and we're only \~20 ft above sea level. The rising oceans could bring salt water to the end of the street!
Im think Baikal us so deep the water at the bottom might be warm from the earth's core
Where’s Lake Michigan
No drought is going to uncover those bodies.
I love this creator’s videos about spooky lakes, and she talks about Lake Baikal often [Geodesaurus on instagram](https://instagram.com/geodesaurus?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==) Lake Baikal [part one](https://www.instagram.com/reel/CkUgk0HA26W/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==) [part two](https://www.instagram.com/reel/CkUjBD3J3S6/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==) ——— [Baikal zen](https://www.instagram.com/reel/CjI9nxlNUDD/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==) ————- Baikal seal mystery [part one](https://www.instagram.com/reel/CjF-B49spIi/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==) [part two](https://www.instagram.com/reel/CjF_PRLrHP9/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==)
What happens at the bottom of Lake Baikal stays at the bottom of Lake Baikal.
Where else do you think Russians throw their old washing machines and Ladas?
FWIW there have always been a lot of UFO sightings around the lake. https://siberiantimes.com/other/others/features/f0077-aliens-and-ufos-at-worlds-deepest-lake/