It was thought Lake Chagatay in Siberia would never recover from the overfishing that almost stripped every living thing from its waters. But fish farming has come to the rescue, promising to return the lake to its former glory.

The fish in question comes from the salmon family. It’s common name is the Northern Whitefish (Coregonus peled) and it’s on the Red List of Threatened Species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Last year 200 tonnes of it were illegally poached in Lake Chagatay in the republic of Tuva. That’s ten times the legal quota. At the time it was thought the lake would never recover its peled supplies.

But the depleted stock is being replenished by thousands of fish larvae farmed at a plant hundreds of kilometres away.

In a process known as ‘seeding’, great numbers of fish larvae are released into the water. It requires great care, as changes in the lake’s current and temperature can be fatal to the embryonic fish.

Moreover, the saviour fish don’t come cheap. They are transported more than 600 kilometres west from the Beloyarsk fish factory in the Altay region. The breeding process is also costly in terms of man-hours.

Each specimen costs 250 roubles, and when you put them all together, that adds up to a lot of roubles!

Fish breeder Lyubov Shpet says it’s almost like a pregnancy: “It’s a very hard and time-consuming process, a woman carries a baby for nine months, and we spend eight months with the fish!”

When the fishermen have completed their work on the shores of Lake Chagytay, they leave with the hope that the illegal poachers will stay away.

The conservationists return in August, to see the fish fully grown.