On 14 June an international research expedition featuring Mir submersibles started in Lausanne on Lake Geneva. The goal of the expedition is to study the impact of man on the environment of this biggest freshwater body in Central Europe. The expedition undertaken as part of ELEMO – a program aimed at researching Lake Geneva – and is timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Triest bathyscaphe submersion to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

The research of Lake Geneva with the use of Russian submersibles will last two months, during which time several dozen of submersions of Mirs are planned. Reporters have dubbed the project Mirs on Lake Geneva, by analogy with the three-year expedition Mirs on Baikal, which was supported by the Fund for Protection of Lake Baikal.

It is symbolic that the idea of the Mirs’ expedition to Lake Geneva, which has received financial support from Frederick Paulsen, President of the pharmaceutical concern Ferring, and Russia’s Honorary Consul in Lausanne, was conceived on Lake Baikal.

The launching of the expedition was attended by Artur Chilingarov, President of the Fund for Protection of Lake Baikal, Vice President of the Russian Geographic Society, Deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation; Mikhail Slipenchuk, Chairman of the Trustees’ Board of the Fund for Protection of Lake Baikal; and Nikolay Kasimov, Dean of the Faculty of Geography at Moscow State University, academician, Senior Vice President of the Russian Geographic Society.

Artur Chilingarov, Anatoly Sagalevich (Head of Laboratory at Mir, Technical Director of the Fund for Protection of Lake Baikal), Evgeny Chernyaev (pilot, Hero of Russia), Frederick Paulsen, John Walsh (the hero of the legendary submersion of 1960), and Bertran Piccard (son of Jacques Piccard who reached the deepest point of the world ocean together with Walsh) participated in the submersions on the first day of the expedition.

Mr Slipenchuk is expected to take part in a submersion in Lake Geneva in one of the Mirs in mid-August.