The weirdest thing Henry Wang has found in a B.C. lake is a drowned snake in a bottle. But he'd be more surprised if he plumbed the depths and found nothing at all.
In the past three years, Wang and his cleanup crew — Divers for Cleaner Lakes and Oceans — have netted everything from beer cans and swim trunks to stolen laptops from the Lower Mainland's lakes and inlets. They've bagged 8,434 kilograms of trash — almost 8? tons — in 54 separate dives since 2013.
And the trend isn't ebbing. So far this year, the non-profit group has hauled in 1,343 kg of junk from local lakes, including Buntzen, Sasamat and Alice — already more than half the 2,443 kg collected in 2015.
"We've never encountered a lake that doesn't have garbage in it," Wang said. "We're pulling out hundreds and hundreds of pounds out of the water. There's no such thing as a clean lake."
Wang discovered B.C.'s dirty secret in September 2013, when he and buddy Jonathan Martin went diving in Buntzen Lake north of Port Moody and found the bottom littered with debris. There was too much garbage to carry out, so they came back with additional divers and a stash of onion bags for collecting garbage.
Seven dives and 770 kg of garbage later, the lake bed was finally clean.
"It was overwhelming," Wang recalled. "But the worst ones are even worse than that. We're trying to tell people as much as we can: Stop throwing stuff in the lake. It doesn't disappear — it's always there."
The situation led to the creation of Divers for Cleaner Lakes and Oceans, a non-profit organization that has joined a smattering of environmental groups across B.C. — such as the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup — with a focus on protecting the province's lakes, rivers and seas.
Some 20 technical divers have joined Wang's crew, which aims to do at least one lake or seabed cleanup each month — either on their own initiative or at the behest of residents, local municipalities, Metro Vancouver or B.C. Parks.
The crew's most recent expedition, on June 15, was to Cultus Lake near Chilliwack, where seven members dived off a B.C. Parks boat at the base of a popular cliff-jumping spot near Lindell Beach. They surfaced with 307 kg of trash, mostly beer cans and bottles. In January, a similar excursion netted the group 320 kg of trash from the water.
Karen Willie, a diver who has participated in most of Wang's expeditions, said the abundance of garbage found in the waterways makes her sad and angry.
"I don't know if people have no awareness but we clean some lakes over and over again and we keep finding the same garbage," Willie said.
"It's not a little mistake. It's unbelievable. It saddens me to see people are doing that in this day and age of green awareness."
But they're not daunted. The group is booked to clean Whistler's Alta and Lost lakes in July, in conjunction with a shoreline cleanup organized by local residents, and was recently contacted by Metro Vancouver for a potential project at Lynn Creek.
David Leavers, visitor and operations services manager with Metro Vancouver Regional Parks, said he isn't sure if there was a formal agreement with the divers, but said the regional district can always use the help.
"We welcome all kinds of stewardship groups, whether they're helping to clean the lakes or remove invasive species," Leavers said. "We would just need to know they were not going to be disturbing the ecology of the lake."
Litter poses a huge hazard to freshwater species such as fish, turtles and birds, who might get entangled in ropes or ingest debris thinking it's food, said Kate Le Souef, manager of the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup.
"The plastics can degrade over time and break into smaller and smaller pieces. The impact of that is not understood yet," she said, adding that the tiny pieces also act as sponges and soak up nasty organisms that are ingested by aquatic species.
Recent research from the Vancouver Aquarium, which organizes the local shoreline cleanups, suggests tiny pieces of plastic are being eaten by zooplankton and could affect their guts or leach chemicals into their bodies. Birds in the ocean have been found dead with soda bottle caps in their stomachs.
The B.C. government levies fines of $115 for littering in a public place and $575 for introducing waste and causing pollution, but didn't immediately have statistics on how many people are caught or fined each year. If an illegal dumping is in progress, the public is advised to call the 24-hour report line at 1-877-952-7277.
For the most part, the divers offer their services as a labour of love, with the added bonus of a karma point or two.
But Wang noted it's not for everyone. "This is not for the average diver, it's incredibly dangerous," he said. "There's zero visibility. You lay there in a black cloud and pick up stuff."
The divers reap cans and bottles more than anything else, and these can be recycled if they aren't too contaminated. In the past three months the group recovered 3,500 cans and bottles. But in many cases the containers have to be tossed in the trash with items that include cellphones, golf balls and swimsuits.
Wang noted that trunks and bikini bottoms are often found around popular cliff-diving spots or around "every lake where kids go to party." They also pulled up a toilet and filing cabinet near Bowen Island's dock.
Sometimes, though, they come up with a few lost treasures like a GoPro and a man's wallet — which was returned to the owner 10 years after he lost it — as well as a stash of stolen laptops. Discarded running shoes are also a common find in local lakes.
So far, none of the divers has found a foot or, worse, the body of a drowning victim.
"When your hand touches a shoe, you cringe a bit, hoping there's no foot in it," Wang said. "I suppose one of these days we will run into one."
The divers tend to return to the same lakes or coves, noting that some of the more popular ones require more care than others.
Although they were called by B.C. Parks to clean up Lindell Beach — after complaints from residents — that debris was relatively old, which means it likely isn't a regular hangout or a trash depository, Wang said.
But other lakes, including Sasamat Lake in Port Moody or Lost Lake in Whistler, are routinely stocked with new garbage, which means they have to be cleaned at least once a year.
The group, which posts cleanup excursions on its website, tries to conduct its dives during the busiest season in order to catch the attention of passersby as they drop the garbage on the beach for pickup by local municipalities.
Wang also uses lost or discarded cellphones, golf balls and other items as show-and-tell for schoolchildren, letting them know of the contamination they cause to the water.
"There is an awful lot of garbage in our freshwater lakes. This is where you go to get your drinking water," Wang said.
"Every bit of this degrades. At the end of the day it's all about education. There's no such thing as a clean lake, which is sad."
Lakes with the most garbage:
Sasamat Lake, Port Moody
Lost Lake, Whistler
Lake recoveries:
Stolen laptops
Bathing suits
Snake in a bottle
Golf balls
Sunglasses
Toilet
Groups with a clean conscience
Divers for Cleaner Lakes and Oceans is just one of a handful of non-profit environmental groups that focus on protecting or cleaning up local waters. Others include:
• The Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup, which needs participants for several community cleanups this summer, including Ambleside Beach on July 10, Crescent Beach South on July 14 and Dyke Road at Fraserwood on July 16.
• The Pacific Streamkeepers Federation, which offers information for hundreds of local groups and individuals wanting to do stream cleanups and storm drain markings, such as putting yellow fishes around drains to prevent the dumping of contaminants. Two weeks ago, the North Shore Streamkeepers worked with the Lynn Valley Community Association to clean up Hastings Creek. The federation also encourages residents to clean up the shoreline around creeks to prevent trash from making it into the waterways.
• World Rivers Day, a celebration of the world's waterways scheduled for Sept. 25. Organizers have just released a film advocating the importance of getting rivers on the radar in the run-up to the next B.C. election, in hopes of getting politicians to develop river-related policies.
• The Invasive Species Council of Metro Vancouver, which is leading the fight against species such as the Japanese and Bohemian knotweed, an aggressive Asian plant first spotted in B.C. in the 1990s.