What is the name of the world’s deepest freshwater lake?

Lake Baikal is the world’s deepest freshwater lake.

Lake Baikal lies in southern Siberia, Russia, and reaches a maximum depth of about 1,642 metres. It is also the world’s oldest existing freshwater lake, with estimates commonly placing its age at roughly 25 million years. The lake formed in an active continental rift zone, where tectonic forces continue to pull the surrounding crust apart.

Baikal holds about 20 percent of the world’s unfrozen surface freshwater, more than any other single lake. Its long isolation has produced exceptional biodiversity, including the endemic Baikal seal, the only seal species that lives exclusively in freshwater. Many other organisms found there occur nowhere else.

Lake Baikal is often compared with Lake Superior, which has the greatest surface area of any freshwater lake, and Lake Tanganyika, which is the second-deepest lake. Those distinctions are different from maximum depth. Baikal’s immense depth and volume also make it an important long-term archive of regional climate and environmental change.