Search for magnetic monopoles with deep underwater Cherenkov detectors at Lake Baikal.

The deep underwater Cherenkov neutrino telescope NT-200 is currently under construction at Lake Baikal. The "subdetectors" NT-36 (1993 - 95) and NT-72 (1995 - 96) have been operating successfully over 3 years. Various techniques have been developed to search for magnetic monopoles with these arrays. Here the authors describe a method used to detect superheavy slowly moving (β ≈ 10^-5 - 10^-3) monopoles catalyzing baryon decay. They present results obtained from the preliminary analysis of the data taken with NT-36 detector in 1993. Furthermore, possibilities to observe faster (β ≈ 0.2 - 1) monopoles via other effects are discussed.