A Russian mini-submarine dive to the bottom of Lake Baikal on Tuesday failed to set a world record for the deepest dive in fresh water, organizers said, contradicting earlier claims. “There was no record,” expedition leader Artur Chilingarov told reporters. “We'll try again.” The Mir-1 submarine went down only 1,580 meters (5,184 feet) and not 1,680 meters as earlier claimed by the crew. The current record of 1,637 metres was set in Lake Baikal in the 1990s. A crew member and a representative of Guinness World Records in Russia both earlier told journalists that the dive had broken the world record. The mission to the depths of Siberia's Lake Baikal is led by Artur Chilingarov, a scientist and Kremlin-backed member of parliament who was part of an earlier mission to the North Pole that sparked criticism in the West. Tucked away in the remote hills of south-east Siberia where Russia borders China and Mongolia, Lake Baikal, the world's deepest and oldest lake, is home to some of the world's rarest types of fish and other water-life. Each of the bright-red Mir-1 and Mir-2 craft carried three scientists. Chilingarov was with reporters who watched from a mission-control point on a nearby platform. Russian officials hailed the five-hour expedition, due to take seabed samples and document Baikal's unique flora and fauna, as a new chapter in Russian science. Formed 25 million years ago, Lake Baikal contains 20 percent of the world's total unfrozen freshwater. One of its rarities is the Baikal seal – a scientific mystery in a lake lying hundreds of kilometers from the closest ocean. Russia used Chilingarov's mission to the North Pole to stake a symbolic claim to the energy riches of the region believed to hold vast resources of oil and natural gas that are expected to become more accessible as climate change melts the ice cap.
