Call them the trash hunters.

“It’s really been an issue that’s really been out of sight and out of mind for so many people,” says Colin West, the founder of Clean Up the Lake.  

The Nevada-based nonprofit dive team has been going deep, searching for submerged litter in Lake Mille Lacs.

Ann Brucciani Lyon, vice chair of the Mille Lacs Area Community Foundation, is spearheading this effort.

 “The goal of the project is to kind of assess what the garbage situation was in Mille Lacs and then determine based on what we found what makes sense for cleanup efforts,” she explains.

This is the seventh and last day of diving for Clean Up the Lake, invited by Brucciani Lyon to survey the lake floor.

They’ve explored 15 locations around Mille Lacs, mostly near shore.  

“A lot of the litter pulled out has been heavier,” West explains. “It’s been cinderblocks, it’s been metal. When it comes to smaller items, glass.”

So far, the dive team members say they’ve been pleasantly surprised about how little garbage they’ve found at the bottom of the lake.

The consensus is a lot of this material has ended up on the shoreline.

Brucciani Lyon, who lives on the north end of the lake, filled two buckets with trash and debris she found washing up on shore.

Her biggest concern is plastic pollution.

“There’s just a lot of fragments of plastic and I think stuff is washing in and then washing out again,” Brucciani Lyon explains. “If it doesn’t get picked up, it continues to degrade and break down and create more fragments.”

Meanwhile, back on the boat, after 45 minutes underwater, the dive team found a boat anchor, glass bottles, some fishing line and a cell phone.

“The phone in this case, I think, was probably accidental,” declared diver Ludovic Fekete. “Ended up in the lake.”

“I think it’s the nature of recreation,” adds divemaster Shawn Louth. “There’s going to be litter if there’s people playing outside. It’s a natural thing that’s unfortunate, and it’s not good for the environment.”

Organizers of this visit hope to get the story out to anglers and other lake users about the effects of submerged litter and how they can be part of the solution.

“We’re actually in motion of setting up a global alliance program,” West says. “We’re looking for strategy partners who see what we’re doing and want to take these activities and skill sets to their regions.”

A new start in tracking down lake trash and finding safe, environmental solutions.

“With the topography of our lake, it seems there’s a lot of movement with that trash,” Brucciani Lyon says. “Do we need somebody to go in and remediate on garbage hotspots in the lake, or do we need to focus more on spring cleanup initiatives or education, so that people are more conscientious about securing their trash whether they’re in the boat or on the ice?”   

You can find out more about Clean Up the Lake by clicking here.