Lake Tahoe Deep Clean Pilot

Project Goals

This is a pilot project in partnership with the North Tahoe Community Alliance, where our organization and its volunteer dive team will be going deeper in Lake Tahoe to clean up litter found during deep dive surveys performed in 2022-2023.  During our surveillance in the previous two years, divers found a more substantial amount of litter between 35 and 55 feet; reminiscent of the litter seen when our organization performed a 72 mile cleanup removing over 25,000 pounds of small litter and GPS tagging over 500 heavy lift litter items for future removal.  Divers will now be required to get additional specialty training, in order to use diver propulsion vehicles (DPVs) and nitrox or enriched oxygen.  The DPVs will allow divers to cover much more ground quickly, and nitrox gas will allow them to stay at depth much longer, while also adding a layer of safety and protection against decompression sickness.  The combination of nitrox & DPVs should make for a much more efficient way of cleaning Lake Tahoe.  The primary work over 10 dive sites is funded by and in partnership with NTCA.  An additional two dive days in Emerald Lake with the same type of pilot research will be performed in El Dorado County in partnership with Tahoe Women’s Community Fund.