Frozen Lakes The World’s Oldest and Deepest Lake by Kristina Makeeva

Frozen Lakes The World’s Oldest and Deepest Lake by

Kristina Makeeva

On Instagram / 500px

It’s the oldest and deepest freshwater lake in the world, reaching depths of more than 5,000 feet, stretching for nearly 400 miles across Siberia, and with water so clear you can see 130ft beneath the surface.

Come winter, it becomes encased with a five to six foot-deep layer of ice, trapping air bubbles which look like intricate glass beads rising up from the deep.

Russian photographer Kristina Makeeva, who captured these ethereal images, told Bored Panda that the vast eight-mile-long crevasses seen snaking across the ice form regularly throughout the season, and mean that the fish underneath don’t die of oxygen starvation.

‘[The cracks make] a loud crack that is reminiscent of thunder or a gun shot,’ she explains. ‘Generally, the ice of Baikal carries a lot of enigmas, the majority of formations provoke the interest of scientists.’

As for the bubbles, they are a result of methane gas escaping from the lake’s algae underneath.

h/t: Bored Panda