At dawn
the first adult midges start to break out.
Soon,
millions upon millions of newly hatched lake flies
are taking to the wing.
Early explorers told tales of lakes that smoked,
as if on fire.
But these spiralling columns hundreds of metres high
are mating flies.
Once the flies have mated,
they will all drop to the water surface,
release their eggs
and die.
Malawi may look like an inland sea,
but it's dwarfed by the world's largest lake -
Baikal in Eastern Siberia.
400 miles long
and over a mile deep,
Baikal contains 1/5 of all the fresh water found in our planet's lakes and rivers.
For five months of the year
it's sealed by an ice sheet over a metre thick.