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50 free Lake Baikal trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Lake Baikal trivia is a chance to test what you know about the most extreme lake on the planet: 1,642 metres deep, 25 to 30 million years old, holding around a fifth of the world's unfrozen fresh water in a rift that is still tearing open by four millimetres a year. It has its own seal, its own transparent oil-fish, giant amphipods, and water so clear you can see forty metres down in winter. This quiz covers the geography and hydrology (the three basins, the 330 inflowing rivers and the single outlet, the Selenga delta, the ice that carries a legal road to Olkhon Island), the endemic wildlife (nerpa, golomyanka, omul, sponges and Epischura), and the human story: Kurykans and Buryats, the Cossack who first saw it in 1643, the train ferry and the 'golden buckle' railway, the White Army's frozen retreat, Soviet scientists' fight against the Baykalsk pulp mill, Putin's submarine dive and the neutrino telescope suspended a kilometre down. Easy questions suit anyone who knows Baikal from a map; the expert tier is for limnologists and Trans-Siberian veterans. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the lake and its wildlife, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Lake Baikal is in which country?
Russia
It lies in southern Siberia between Irkutsk Oblast and the Republic of Buryatia.
Q 02What is Lake Baikal's maximum depth?
1,642 metres
That makes it the deepest lake in the world; the surface sits 455 metres above sea level, so the bottom is nearly 1,200 metres below it.
Q 03Roughly what share of the world's unfrozen fresh water does Lake Baikal hold?
About 19%
By volume it contains more water than all the North American Great Lakes combined.
Q 04How old is Lake Baikal estimated to be?
25–30 million years
That makes it the most ancient lake in geological history, and its sediments were never scoured by ice sheets.
Q 05Lake Baikal's surface area is slightly larger than which European country?
Belgium
At 31,722 square kilometres it is the seventh-largest lake in the world by area.
Q 06Lake Baikal sits in what kind of geological feature?
A rift valley
The Earth's crust is slowly pulling apart there, and the rift widens by about 4 mm a year.
Q 07By roughly how much does the Baikal rift widen each year?
4 mm
The fault zone is seismically active, with hot springs and notable earthquakes every few years.
Q 08How thick is the layer of sediment beneath the bottom of Lake Baikal?
About 7 km
That puts the rift floor 8–11 km below the surface, the deepest continental rift on Earth.
Q 09Into how many basins is Lake Baikal divided?
Three
North, Central and South, separated by features such as Academician Ridge and the Selenga delta.
Q 10Lake Baikal drains through a single outlet. Which river?
The Angara
The Angara flows on to join the Yenisey; the Irkutsk Dam on it raised the lake level by 1.4 metres from 1956.
Q 11Roughly how many rivers flow into Lake Baikal?
About 330
The largest, the Selenga, rises in Mongolia and supplies almost half the inflow.
Q 12Which river, rising in Mongolia, provides almost half of Lake Baikal's inflow?
The Selenga
It carries around 935 cubic metres of water per second into the lake.
Q 13How far down can you see in Lake Baikal's open water in winter?
30–40 metres
In summer, transparency drops to a more ordinary 5–8 metres.
Q 14For roughly how long each year is Lake Baikal's surface frozen?
Q 21How long can a Baikal seal stay underwater if it needs to?
Up to 70 minutes
It has two litres more blood than any other seal of its size, though most dives last only two to four minutes.
Q 22What colour is a Baikal seal pup's natal coat?
White
The silky white fur is quickly shed for a darker adult-style coat.
Q 23Which translucent, scaleless fish is the main food of the Baikal seal?
The golomyanka
Also called the Baikal oilfish, it gives birth to live larvae and ranges through the whole water column down to 1.6 km.
4–5 months
Ice usually reaches 0.5 to 1.4 metres thick, and more than 2 metres where hummocks form.
Q 15What is the name of Lake Baikal's largest island?
Olkhon
It is 72 km long and the third-largest lake-bound island in the world; the lake has 27 islands in all.
Q 16What is the famous landmark near Khuzhir on the lake's largest island, said to house the deity Burkhan?
Shaman's Rock (the Shamanka)
Buryat shamanism reveres the 'thirteen lords of Olkhon', and the island is a centre of the ancient Kurumchinskay culture.
Q 17The strait between the largest island and the western shore is called Maloye More, meaning what?
The Little Sea
Russians long called Baikal a sea rather than a lake, a usage found in Avvakum's autobiography and Remezov's 17th-century maps.
Q 18The only legal ice road across Lake Baikal runs to the largest island. How long is it?
12 km
It runs from Kurkut on the mainland with ice about 60 cm thick and a 10-tonne weight limit.
Q 19What is the local name of the Baikal seal, the only seal endemic to the lake?
Nerpa
It is one of the smallest true seals and one of very few pinnipeds living exclusively in fresh water.
Q 20The Baikal nerpa is most closely related to which Arctic species?
The ringed seal
So is the Caspian seal, which lives in the other great inland sea of Eurasia.
Q 24How do female golomyankas reproduce?
They give birth to live larvae
A female releases a swarm of 2,000–3,000 larvae; only about 17–32% of the population is male.
Q 25Which endemic whitefish, smoked and sold in lakeside markets, is Baikal's main commercial fish?
The omul
It descends from Arctic whitefish that entered the lake about 20,000 years ago; a fishing ban was imposed in 2017.
Q 26Which crustacean group has 350-plus endemic species in Lake Baikal, some growing 'giant'?
Amphipods
Their gigantism, like that of Antarctic amphipods, has been linked to the lake's high dissolved oxygen.
Q 27What share of the benthic animal biomass in Lake Baikal is made up of sponges?
About 44%
Most belong to the endemic family Lubomirskiidae, which colonised the lake about 3.4 million years ago.
Q 28Which Siberian tribe of the sixth century gave the lake a name translating as 'much water'?
The Kurykans
Han Chinese armies had earlier called it the 'North Sea' of the semi-mythical Four Seas.
Q 29Which Russian explorer became the first European to see Lake Baikal, in 1643?
Kurbat Ivanov
He reached it by going up the Lena; half his party wintered on the Barguzin River.
Q 30Which indigenous people raise goats, camels and horses on Lake Baikal's eastern shore?
The Buryats
They called it Baygal nuur, 'natural lake'; the Yakuts called it Bay göl, 'rich lake'.