Lake Baikal, which holds one-fifth of the world's unfrozen fresh water, is undergoing its gravest crisis in recent history, experts say. The government has banned the catching of a signature fish that has lived in the world's deepest lake for centuries but is now under threat.??
Baikal in Russia's Siberia is a natural wonder of "exceptional value to evolutionary science" meriting its listing as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
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Baikal's high biodiversity includes over 3,600 plant and animal species, most of which are endemic to the lake.
Over the past several years, however, the lake, a major international tourist attraction, has been crippled by a series of detrimental phenomena, some of which remain a mystery to scientists.?
They include the disappearance of the omul fish, rapid growth of putrid algae and the death of endemic species of sponges across its vast 3.2 million-hectare (7.9 million-acre) area.
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Starting in October, the government introduced a ban on all commercial fishing of omul, a species of the salmon family only found in Baikal, fearing "irreversible consequences for its population", the Russian fisheries agency told AFP.