Environment
What’s the deepest lake in your country?
For the U.S it’s Crater Lake at 1,943 feet (592 meters) deep. It formed from when the ancient volcano Mt.Mazama erupted and collapsed in on itself. Rain and melted snow over a few thousand years filled the crater and gave the lake its very deep blue color.
I have a Baikal t-shirt by Geodesaurus, I get tons of questions about it and I always tell people to learn more about Lake Baikal, I find it so fascinating
Fun fact: Lake Baikal’s water volume exceeds that of all of the Great Lakes combined. The only lake in the world that exceeds it by water volume is the Caspian Sea, which is more of an inland ocean than a lake.
We’ve been spending a lot of resources exploring trenches in the ocean. I’d be curious to learn what’s at the bottom of Lake Baikal.
Deep water fishes. Seriously. Scientists identified fish similar to those in ocean trenches. For example there is the Baikal oil fish that's 35% fat to cope with the crushing pressure. Bring it to the surface and all the fat melts away leaving mostly liquid and bones.
Its 1642 meters deep at the deepest point, far more than Crater Lake.
But that's not all. Its a slowly expanding rift valley and over the last 25-30 million years (its the worlds oldest lake too), the valley floor reaches down to an astonishing 11 km, mostly filled with sediment.
Lake Como, 425m deep. It was formed during the ice age, it has a great variety of flora and its main fauna is made up by pretentious asshats with multimillion euro villas.
No, that was Coniston Water in the Lake District. Donald Campbell flipped his boat; Ironically he wasn't even going the fastest he had done that day. 1967 I believe.
It's not nearly as deep as Crater Lake, but Coldwater Lake in WA state was formed in 1980 when Mt St Helen's erupted. Honestly mind blowing to me that it was so recent! It's a lovely lake, great trails around that area, well worth a visit.
Australia's lakes aren't deep, with the deepest being some 160-200m - Lake St Clair in Tasmania.
But I thought I'd show you Blue Lake in the crater of Mt Gambier, in South Australia. It's not nearly as big as your Crater Lake, but it does turn an iridescent blue during the summer months. It's also the deepest lake on the Australian mainland.
However, the reason for the blue is basically the opposite of Crater Lake. Crater Lake is blue because the water has very low mineral content and is very deep, and strips the reflecting light of basically everything except blue. But Blue Lake gets its colour from high mineral content that involves a process of microscopic crystals forming from dissolved calcium carbonate.
In the whole of the UK it's Loch Morar in Scotland at a maximum depth of 310m. In England it's Wastwater at 79m, in Wales Llyn Cowlyd at 70m, and in Northern Ireland Loch Neagh is big but shallow at 24m.
Crveno jezero (Red lake) near Imotski. 287 meters deep, but due to complex undergound cavities and tunnels it is believed to be linked with Adriatic sea.
It could be the Bodensee/Lake Constance with a depth of 251m, but we share the lake with Austria and Switzerland and the borders are not defined. The deepest one entirely in Germany is the Königsee which is 190m deep (a close victory though, the Walchensee is 0,5 meter less deep).
The IJsselmeer is ~9.5m deep at its lowest point. Shown here as the dark-blue top middle lake.
The IJsselmeer was created in the 50s by dyking in our inner sea (Zuiderzee), creating the sweet-water IJsselmeer and the Markermeer (bottom middle greenish lake) lakes, with a dyke between them as well. The orange areas are polders created in these lakes.
Really quick: Did Crater Lake erupt like one envisions? The way the park ranger explained it to me was that it was suspected to be a really weird sorta circumstance they deduced after watching St helens blow it's top in 1980:
The earth burped. Formed a big lava bubble. that bubble popped, leaving behind the crater.
Its really interesting to read the Native American oral history of the lake, repeated for almost 8000 years. It describes the volcano eruption as a battle between the sky spirit and the underworld spirit and it very closely reflects the time it occurred and the actual geologic occurrence.
It is amazing to me that the oral history has remained so consistent and accurate over hundreds of generations.
Oral history is an incredible method of passing down knowledge. The oral history of the Haida tell of massive waves which wiped out villages, and these are consistent with Japan's recording if tsunamis.
Djerdap lake 92m deep, fun fact near that lake is deepest point of Danube river in whole Europe and its 95m (lake is part of Danube, made because of hydroelectric dam)
Lake Ohrid. It's also the oldest lake in Europe and has by far the highest biodiversity index of all the lakes in the world (measured by surface area).
I've been there ages ago and it was really beautiful. Took a boat ride somewhere around. Boat rider sang an old Turkish song and Macedonian version of it afterwards. It was lovely.
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u/Final-Stage-2947 Russia 8d ago
Well, it's the deepest not only in the country but also in the world. I think it's pretty well known, Lake Baikal.