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There is a lake in Siberia called Lake Pustoye. No life exists in the lake. There are no fishes and no plants and even trees around the lake die . No birds even visit this lake .The lake even has bubbles in it like champagne .The water has been tested and there is nothing in the water that makes it harmful to life. It even tastes like champagne and yet life cannot exist in it .Fish were introduced into the lake but they quickly died off . So why can't any life form survive in this lake ?

Peter U
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    Can you give links with evidence that The water has been tested and there is nothing in the water that makes it harmful to life? I.e. not just the claim that this has been done, but some specifics saying who has done it, and what they've found? Otherwise, this looks like just another click-bait made-up claim. – iayork May 25 '18 at 14:12
  • Yeah a I agree with Iayork a claim like that needs some serious sourcing otherwise you can assume it is wrong. – John May 25 '18 at 15:10
  • Assuming the claim is supported. perhaps the water is saturated with volcanic gasses, like Lake Nyos in Africa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos That would account for the bubbles and possibly the absence of animal life, though I can't see why it would affect plants or microorganisms. – jamesqf May 25 '18 at 18:23
  • The article said that supposedly several countries around the world have tested the water and found nothing harmful about it . Also if there is no vegetation or other life forms then how did they expect the fish to survive that they attempted to introduce into the lake . What would the fish have ate ? – Peter U May 25 '18 at 19:24
  • If you google" Lake Pustoye Mystery" the very first link on the page "The Secret of the Siberian Pond" will take you to the article @iayork – Peter U May 25 '18 at 19:44
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    @PeterU You understand that that article is completely devoid of facts, right? It makes claims about 'large numbers of scientists", "experts", and "specialists", but gives absolutely no information on who they are, where they're located, what they are specialists in, what they looked for, and what they found. It's classic click-bait vagueness and obfuscation. If that's all you have, I'm voting to close this question as "Unclear what you're asking", since you have no actual facts to discuss. – iayork May 25 '18 at 21:18
  • Pubmed, which includes over 28 million peer-reviewed articles, has 0 instances of "Pustoye" in it, suggesting that no experts have actually looked at the lake. – iayork May 25 '18 at 23:01
  • And finally, The Geographical Journal, Vol. 19 (1902) refers to villagers living on Lake Pustoye who "make a comfortable living by fishing", which suggests the lake is far from empty. I think this is some kind of misunderstanding (perhaps based on a translation of the name) that has been mindlessly parroted by the gullible and sensationalist. – iayork May 25 '18 at 23:06
  • Sounds like carbon dioxide, it seeps up from an under ground source. At high levels it will kill all normal life. There is at least one lake in Africa that has this CO2 saturation. There was a program on TV a few years ago about it. There is some unusual circulation and out gassing but I forgot the mechanisms..CO2 would explain the "tastes like champagne" . – blacksmith37 May 26 '18 at 01:23
  • So I guess that is the reason that my Doctor said that I shouldn't believe what Doctor google says, lol . So in other words you are saying that villagers are fishing in this lake, which would mean that the article is false ? @iayork – Peter U May 26 '18 at 15:54
  • @iayork - it sounds all like an excellent answer. Combine the comments (mind to include the links) and et voila? – AliceD Jun 06 '18 at 21:12
  • If the water is bubbly and taste like champagne, it means that the water is saturated with carbon dioxide, and has a pH of about 3. the water probably kills everything (plant, animals and most bacteria) around it by carbon dioxide poisoning and very acidic water. – JayCkat Jul 08 '18 at 11:08
  • I am more curious if something can survive in the lake. Lake Pustoye has actually been tested and scientists have found nothing wrong at all with the water, and when they saw that the lake had bubbles and tested those too, again they found nothing, so they did a few tests. First they put the least demanding fish in the lake but soon found that they all died, they tried the same thing with aquatic plants, those just rotted away. They just straight up labeled it as a dangerous lake due to nothing being able to survive in it, what I am personally curious about is if a tardigrade, aka water bears – Cumorah Jul 27 '18 at 16:46

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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/200464654

This is a detailed comparison between two lakes in the Trans-Volga region in Russia, one of them being Lake Pustoye. I'm not sure if the Lake Pustoye in this article is the same lake being referred to by the op as it isn't in Siberia and there's no mention of champagne-like water, but it does bear the same name and has a curious lack of fish. The authors found that while there is an absence of fish, there is by no means an absence of life in the waters of Pustoye. In the article, they catalog the seasonal shifts of biodiversity in the waters of both lakes. The pH was observed to be low in Lake Pustoye which they implicated to be the likely cause for the lack of fish, though they indicated that more research would be needed to determine the exact cause of the acidification.

Tim D
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    Impressive detective work, Sherlock. +1 – AliceD Jul 09 '18 at 09:46
  • Pustoye, or Пустое, means empty. It's not an uncommon name for a lake. This is certainly not the one the apocryphal story is about. Search Озеро Пустое in google maps and you'll find many of them. – De Novo Jul 27 '18 at 17:39