The new round of Northern Baikal research kicks off when the Metropoliya special-purpose ship (with its Mir-1 and Mir-2 manned submersibles) and the Akademik Koptyug tugboat leave Chivyrkuy Bay – where the teams had inspected the lake’s eastern slopes and studied oil flows at a depth of 600 meters – and move toward Frolikh Bay.  This stage of the scientific program aims to: set up a Lander probe on the bottom of Lake Baikal, compare the data to the results obtained in the 1990s, take a detailed thermal flow measurement, and study the poly-thermal discharges that occur at around 400 meters.