The Lake Tahoe underwater cleanup kicked off last May on Tahoe’s East Shore. And before that, in the summer of 2020, the divers staged a series of garbage-collecting dives in South Lake Tahoe. Now, divers have counted some 9,281 pieces of trash they collected from Tahoe’s depths, according to a press release. In total, the collected trash weighed 8,122 pounds.

Among their finds: shredded tires, golf balls, tennis balls, a plastic snorkel, fishing nets, glass bottles, aluminum cans, phones, red Solo cups, tennis shoes and shards of glass.

Microplastic pollution is a growing issue in Lake Tahoe, according to the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center’s most recent State of the Lake report. A significant amount of microplastic pollution is found near the shoreline, where the scuba divers are doing their clean-up. One of the most egregious examples of plastic pollution in Tahoe happened over the summer, when thousands of tiny white plastic balls washed into the lake; the plastic balls spilled from the inside of a broken pool toy.

Clean Up the Lake hoped to complete their circumnavigation of Lake Tahoe before winter, but the challenging summer that Tahoe experienced — in August, many of the divers were evacuated from their homes during the Caldor Fire — set back the timeline. As of November, divers from Clean Up the Lake had reached Tahoe’s West Shore, though. There are 29 miles left to swim before they complete the mission.

Colin West, founder of Clean Up the Lake, told the San Francisco Chronicle (SFGATE and the San Francisco Chronicle are both owned by Hearst but operate independently of one another) that the group intends to continue scuba diving to pick up trash well into the winter. The project is funded in part through a $100,000 matching donation made by Tahoe Blue Vodka, and donations from a philanthropy group called the Tahoe Fund and Vail Resorts. The group also receives funding from the Nevada Division of State Lands’ Lake Tahoe License Plate program.