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News
June 14, 2011
Mikhail Slipenchuk, Head of METROPOL Group, took Mirs on Baikal to Lake Geneva
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.
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