Volunteer scuba divers pull 144 kilos of trash from Sasamat Lake

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Simply earlier than Christmas, Henry Wang and a bunch of greater than a dozen volunteers gave native residents the present of a cleaner Sasamat Lake.

The group spent the morning of Saturday, Dec. 16 diving into the frigid, five-degree waters, amassing greater than 144 kilos of trash from its depths. As an alternative of milk and cookies, they’d donuts and low.

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For Wang, the scuba diving problem and environmental consciousness he spreads on-line is gratification sufficient.

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“I’ve been doing it lengthy sufficient and making social media about it lengthy sufficient that I’m beginning to present a presence in individuals’s minds,” Wang mentioned. “No matter individuals drop within the lake, if we run into it, we decide it up.”

Because the founding father of Divers for Cleaner Lakes and Oceans, Wang is not any stranger to B.C.’s garbage-strewn lake beds. He’s been making an attempt to wash them up for greater than a decade.

The group, composed of dive professionals and different volunteers, travels to dozens of Decrease Mainland Lakes yearly to do comparable cleanups.

The initiative obtained its begin in Port Moody in 2013 after Wang and fellow founder Jonathan Martin went for a dive at Buntzen Lake and had been shocked by the quantity of trash resting on its flooring.

After repeated journeys, Buntzen was finally cleansed of greater than 1,700 kilos of forgotten rubbish.

Within the duo’s first eight months as lake janitors, they eliminated 7,700 kilos of litter from Rice Lake, Buntzen Lake, Browning Lake, Cat Lake, Alice Lake, Misplaced Lake and Alta Lake.

December’s Sasamat tour resurfaced extra of the identical: greater than 600 discarded liquor and drink containers, together with fishing rods, kayak paddles, sun shades, clothes and different forgotten oddities. A misplaced mobile phone in a water-proof bag was even returned to its proprietor.

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Though Wang says they’ve slowed their cleanup tempo barely since COVID-19 as a consequence of a lack of accessible volunteers, the group nonetheless managed to hold out 47 dives in 2023.

“We’re type of slowly placing the group again collectively,” Wang mentioned, noting the earlier two years, they carried out a mixed 109 dives.

Discovering certified divers, nevertheless, is difficult in itself. They must be comfy solo diving in situations with zero visibility and frequent entanglement hazards, in line with Wang.

Usually, scuba divers journey in pairs, however in a lake-cleanup dive, they received’t have the ability to see one another as a result of quantity of silt that will get kicked up.

“We’re fairly cautious on who we decide up,” mentioned Wang, who’s skilled as a cave diver. “We purposely hunt down divers which can be extremely licensed.”

The low-visibility situations in Sasamat Lake additionally make it troublesome to evaluate how a lot of a dent the divers are making within the rubbish drawback.

Wang admits there was no actual technique used to grid the cleanup.

For his half, he swam out to a random level within the lake, dropped about 70 ft deep, and travelled in a straight line again, amassing all the things he may earlier than silt clouds obscured his sight.

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Wang mentioned if he sees 4 beer cans, he must really feel round for the third, and sometimes fully lose the fourth as a result of silt.

“We don’t know what we are able to’t see,” Wang mentioned. “I can’t get all of it typically. That’s simply what it’s. I don’t lose sleep over it, I simply preserve going as a result of there’s extra.”

Wang mentioned all lakes have their challenges, however most have distinct geographical options, making it simpler for divers to orient themselves and be extra methodical of their cleanup.

He described Sasamat Lake as a “big nondescript bowl,” shallow across the edges and deeper within the center.

“I don’t have some extent of reference. I don’t truly know the place I’m within the water,” Wang mentioned. “I’ll simply decide a line and say I’m going this fashion.”

He mentioned some UBC college students trying to design some mechanism to extra completely clear lake beds have approached him on the lookout for video references, however Wang appeared skeptical.

Lakes have numerous flooring beds: some include logs, others rocks, some are very silty and a few have a considerable amount of range.

Wang mentioned that something that dredges the underside of a lake would probably destroy ecosystems, whereas selecting rubbish by hand leaves the surroundings intact.

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One would possibly assume it will be irritating to return to a lake and see a brand new patch of trash in a beforehand swept space, however Wang chalks it as much as human nature.

He mentioned Cultus Lake in Chilliwack and Cat Lake in Squamish are the worst for rubbish, merely as a result of quantity of leisure exercise.

Wang mentioned he can take away 150 beer cans from underneath Cat Lake’s dock after a protracted weekend.

“Individuals are going to do what persons are going to do,” he mentioned. “Folks social gathering on the lake with numerous ingesting, inevitably. You’re gonna lose issues, both maliciously or unintentionally.”

Wang mentioned it’s good to supply a usually costly service free to native governments, and he hopes the group might be monetized sufficient to be self-sustaining sooner or later.

His TikTok channel has reached greater than 114,000 followers, and the newest dive at Sasamat Lake was sponsored by Pacific Pilsner.

“The cleanup diving and content material creation diving is only a pastime. There’s no actual pay in it,” Wang mentioned. “It’s truly fairly straightforward for us to do that, as a result of we’re doing it for enjoyable.”

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Patrick Penner is a Native Journalism Initiative Reporter with the Tri-Cities Dispatch. The Native Journalism Initiative is funded by the Authorities of Canada. 

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