The plan was to boldly go where no man had been before. But Russia's latest patriotic mission to the bottom of the world's deepest lake ended in humiliation and confusion on Tuesday, after a group of scientists were forced to withdraw claims they had set a new underwater record.
Russian explorers using two mini-submarines reached the bottom of Siberia’s vast Lake Baikal — one of the last relatively unexplored frontiers on Earth. The team announced they had sunk to a record depth of 1,680m.
After returning to the surface, however, the scientists conceded that their twin submersibles — Mir1 and Mir2 — had not gone quite as deep as they had hoped.
The submarines descended to a depth of 1,580m and 1,592m, they confirmed.
The lake, which contains around 20 percent of the world’s unfrozen freshwater, was measured at 1,637m deep by another research expedition back in the 1990s.
Baikal enjoys a unique ecosystem. As well as fish and other freshwater life found nowhere else on the planet, it is home to the rare nerpa — one of only three known species of freshwater seals.
But Russian experts said there was little possibility the scientists would find new or exotic life on the bottom of the lake, preferring instead to hail the dive as the latest example of Russia’s resurgence.
“We have gone to the depths of Lake Baikal to find out what the lake is,” Yulduz Khliullin, an assistant director of Moscow’s Institute of Oceanography said on Tuesday. “We are interested in its chemistry and biology.”
He added, however: “The dive is certainly also a kind of advertisement for the Russian government and for our science. We are trying also to draw attention to the lake and the need to preserve it.”
Asked whether the scientists might find a new species of fish, or interesting shrimp, Khliullin said: “I don’t think they will discover anything extraordinary. But there are indications we may find hydrogen gas.”
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