The largest freshwater lake on our planet is Baikal. Its depth reaches 1637 meters, and the age of this unique reservoir, according to scientists, is more than twenty-five million years.
Among the researchers of the lake there is a hypothesis that Baikal is the future ocean: it has no signs of aging, its shores are constantly expanding. The only river flowing from Lake Baikal is the Angara, the length of which is 1779 kilometers. The source of the Angara is the widest (863 m) and largest on Earth.
Baikal fish is known not only in Siberia, its fame has long crossed the borders of our country. Her tastes make up legends. Sun-dried or smoked omul is a traditional gift that Siberians bring to their friends in many cities of Russia. Having once tasted dishes of Baikal fish, most travelers plan the next trip to Lake Baikal in order to enjoy the magnificent nature again and enjoy the taste of smoked whitefish, fried grayling and the aroma of smoked omul and dried golomyanki.
Baikal Reserve
To preserve the unique nature of Lake Baikal in 1969, a biosphere reserve was established here, which is located on the eastern shore of the lake. It occupies a vast territory - 167, 871 hectares of the Khamar-Daban massif. The borders of the Baikal reserve pass along the Mishikha and Vydrinnaya rivers. The mountains surrounding Lake Baikal are a natural barrier from air currents that carry intense rainfall.
The reserve has preserved hundreds of unique species of flora and fauna. The rare representatives of the underwater world is famous for the Baikal Reserve. There are twelve species of fish in it. This is mainly lenok, taimen and grayling. These species enter rivers during spawning, and at the end of summer they return to Baikal again, where they winter.
Species of Baikal fish
In total, there are more than fifty species of fish in Baikal (including protected areas). Only fifteen are classified as fishing. The most famous of them are grayling, whitefish and omul. Less valuable Baikal fish such as the Baikal sturgeon, taimen, burbot and lenok are widespread. In addition, perch, ide, and roach live in the lake.
According to the latest data, the total biomass of fish in the lake is about two hundred thirty thousand tons, including sixty thousand tons of commercial ones. To increase the number of valuable fish species in Irkutsk, Baikal Fish LLC was created, which we will talk about the activities a bit later.
Below we will present you a list of the most common types of Baikal fish:
- taimen;
- lenok;
- omul;
- Arctic char;
- whitefish;
- grayling;
- pike;
- ide;
- bream
- Siberian dace;
- minnow;
- Siberian roach;
- gudgeon;
- crucian carp;
- tench;
- Amur carp
- Siberian char
- Amur catfish;
- Siberian plucking;
- burbot;
- firebrand rotan;
- 27 species of broad-shouldered;
- golomyanka
- yellowfly.
Let's get acquainted with some types in more detail.
Whitefish
This is a cold-water lake fish that spawns and lives in Lake Baikal. The population is represented by lake-river and lake forms, having the status of subspecies. They differ in the number of gill stamens, perforated scales located in the lateral line. Baikal whitefish, lake-shaped, has twenty-five to thirty-five gill stamens. These fish usually spawn in Baikal.
Sig-pyzhyan is a river form that has significantly fewer stamens, a maximum of twenty-four. In Baikal, as well as its tributaries, this fish is a migratory fish, it spends life in constant migration. Usually spawns in rivers, 250 km from the mouth, and walks in the waters of Lake Baikal. Unlike its lake relatives, it has a rather low body and tight-fitting scales.
Whitefish is distributed almost throughout the lake, but its highest concentration is noted in the Barguzinsky and Chivyrkuisky bays, in the Selenginsky shallow water and in the Small Sea. Often it is found in the pre-mouth space of the Upper Angara and Kichera rivers. Sig prefers shallow water with sandy soil. Representatives of the lake-river form live deeper than twenty meters. In winter, they fall to a depth of 150 m, and in summer and spring - by 40-50 meters.
The average weight of a five-year-old individual is 500 grams, a seven-year-old whitefish weighs one and a half kilograms, and by the age of 15, the weight of the fish can reach 5 kg. Fishermen claim that they managed to catch whitefish weighing more than 10 kg. Whitefish is a valuable Baikal fish, the fishing of which, according to scientists, now needs to be reduced, especially during the spawning season. To increase its number, artificial breeding with the obligatory rearing of juveniles is necessary. In this process, environmental features of all stages of development are taken into account.
Omul
The Baikal omul fish is represented in the lake by five populations:
- embassy;
- Selenginskaya;
- Chivyrkuiskaya;
- North Baikal;
- Barguzinsky.
Before you reach the lake, you will meet the most famous and delicious representative of omul - North Baikal. It can be seen in all retail outlets in cities, at railway stations, in small towns. During the trip, locals will offer you dried and salted omul, and when you get to the lake you can see freshly caught omul.
Baikal omul is a fish belonging to the whitefish genus, the Salmonidae family. The once huge and extremely popular inhabitant of Lake Baikal, today has significantly decreased in size, and, unfortunately, is on the verge of extinction. The length of his body today does not exceed fifty centimeters with a weight of three kilograms.
The most popular among tourists, as, indeed, among local residents is cold smoked omul. This is truly a real delicacy, not only in our country, but also abroad. This valuable Baikal fish, the meat of which has a very special taste that can not be confused with another. It is very tender and fat. With proper preparation, he has an unusual taste, for which he is appreciated. Most tourists who first tasted this perfection claim that they did not eat anything tastier in their life.
Security measures
This Baikal fish, due to over-fishing, catastrophically reduces the number of populations. Over the past fifty years, about forty thousand centners of this fish have been caught. For this reason, in 1982, a special omul trapping program was developed and adopted, which made it possible to calculate stocks and develop rational fishing methods. In recent years, they have increasingly resorted to incubation of omul. We hope that due to security activities, this Baikal fish, the photo of which you can see below, will be preserved and its population will increase.
Grayling
White Baikal grayling is a subspecies of Siberian grayling. In the lake, this Baikal fish lives almost offshore, most often found in the eastern part, where the depth does not exceed thirty meters. For spawning, grayling prefers shallows with a pebble-sandy bottom or rifts. Spawning begins in late April and lasts until mid-May. At this time, the water temperature ranges from +7.5 to +14.6 ° C.
During the mating season, grayling changes color: the body of the males acquires a dark gray color with a metallic tint. And above the ventral fins, copper-red spots appear on the dorsal fin. The upper edge of the dorsal fin is decorated with a dark red border. The development of eggs of this species lasts about seventeen days.
Sturgeon
This is the oldest and largest fish in Baikal Kamchatka. The first information about it can be found in the messages of Nicholas Spafarius and Archpriest Habakkuk, who visited the wonderful lake at the very beginning of the XVII century. I. G. Gmelin (1751) indicated a huge number of sturgeon in it when he described his journey through Siberia. I. G. Georgi, a well-known naturalist researcher, at the end of the 17th century described in detail in his notes the sturgeon that lives in the lake, as well as the fishing of this fish in the Selenga River.
For many years, Baikal sturgeon was studied by A. G. Egorov. He did a great job of researching river mouths and bays, describing its abundance, distribution, biology, and fishing in various areas of the lake. The famous Russian writer V.P. Astafyev called him the "fish king".
Sturgeon - is the only representative of cartilaginous fish in Lake Baikal. Its color varies from pale brown to dark brown, the belly is always much lighter. Five rows of special bone bugs are found along the whole body, and between them are small bone plates of various shapes. Caudal fin, more precisely, its upper lobe, noticeably longer than the lower.
Where is sturgeon distributed?
The most common sturgeon is in the Selenga River Delta, in the bays of Lake Baikal. It lives at a depth of up to fifty meters. In the fall, during strong winds, it can go to a depth of 150 meters. Winters in the mouths of large rivers, in pits. In a year, this fish grows by an average of 5-7 cm. An adult reaches a meter or more in length and weighs 100 kg. Baikal sturgeon is listed in the Red Books of the Russian Federation and Buryatia as a rare species.
Litter fish
Well-known fish in Siberia “perches” and pikes, ides and dace trees, scrubs and crucians “came” along large and small rivers to the lake, however, deep Baikal did not accept them, since there are different depths, different forages, and different temperatures. These fish took root in litter - in the shallow bays of Lake Baikal, and taimen and lenok fell into the lake along the large tributaries of Lake Baikal and can be found in river mouths.
Inhabitants of the freshwater depths
About twenty million years ago, cottoid fish began to enter rivers, trying to adapt to the freshwater way of life. On the rivers they got to Baikal. Initially, they settled in shallow water, then - deep-water areas, as well as the water column. Today, 14 species of cottoid fish live in the rivers and lakes of Eurasia, including the islands of Japan, and there are 33 species in Baikal.
Most (84%) of the cottoid fish of Lake Baikal live at the bottom. Often they just "sit" on the ground. You can even touch them with your hand, and only in this case they "jump" for forty - eighty centimeters and freeze again, dropping to the ground.
Some species of bottom fish prefer to bury themselves in sand or silt so that only round eyes can be seen above the surface of the ground. Often these fish are found under stones (which is often why they are called sculpin), in burrows, in crevices. In 1977, researchers from the scientific submarine Paisys saw a red broad-headed bow at a depth of 800 m. She dug a hole in the silt, which she climbed into, put forward only her head, and attacked, swam past her shelter, amphibian crustaceans.
Color
Baikal fish caught at great depths have the most diverse color. Coastal species, as a rule, have gray or gray-green scales, and dark spots are clearly visible on the sides of the body. Occasionally there are fish, painted in an unusual emerald green color. With increasing depth, the color of the underwater inhabitants changes to gray with red stripes, pink, pearl gray, brown, orange.
Golomyanka
Despite the interesting features of all cottoid fish, golomyanka should be recognized as the most unique of them. This is the largest population in the lake. Its total biomass is almost twice that of all other fish that live in Lake Baikal. It is more than one hundred and fifty thousand tons. This is a viviparous fish that does not spawn: live fry are born in it.
Two varieties of this fish live in Baikal - large and small. Both of them are found at different depths, right down to the bottom. Golomyanka, in addition to zooplankton, eat their offspring. And despite this, the annual growth of this fish is about one hundred and fifty thousand tons. In other words, within one year she updates the population completely.
It is impossible to organize industrial trapping for the golomyanka, since it is dispersed over long distances and is a food for the Baikal seal and omul. The largest representatives of the species reach 25 cm in length (females), males - 15 cm.
