When Susan Baur, an 84-year-old retired psychologist from North Falmouth, Massachusetts, started swimming in her mid-60s, she was afraid of the ocean. “So I went to the ponds,” she said. “Which were dirty, but the trash made it easier.” She used floating trash as markers so as not to get lost in the murky waters. “I thought, ‘OK, 25 more hits on this beer bottle and I can turn around.’ It was strangely comforting.

But then she started to worry about the wildlife. “I wanted the turtles to have a good life,” says Baur. “And the more popular the ponds became with visitors, the more trash ended up in them. It went from a few strategically placed cans of beer to dozens. It was just too much!

So in 2018, she and some swimming friends began casually planning to pick up trash. “We would call each other and say, ‘Oh, are you going to swim today too?’ Let’s bring a tank so we can pick up trash along the way. Little by little it started to gain momentum and more and more people came, and it turned into something.

Part of the waste removed from Jenkins Pond in East Falmouth in July 2022.

Courtesy of OLAUG

This “something” became the Old ladies against underwater waste (or OLAUG for short), a group of about 15 swimmers and five kayakers dedicated to cleaning freshwater ponds around Cape Cod. Last summer, they cleaned 17 of Cape Town’s 996 freshwater ponds. (Next year, Baur adds, they hope to increase that number to 20.) They have removed a remarkable amount of trash from the water, including car batteries, old shoes, cell phones, dog toys, a garden gnome and even a toilet. bowl. Most of it goes to landfill or recycling, but sometimes they find treasures that they keep. “I have a collection of water guns at home, so no one throws away a water gun. We found a few and they all came home with me,” Baur said.

Selection rounds are regularly held to join OLAUG and there is already a waiting list of 40 women wishing to join the ranks. To be a swimmer, you must be comfortable in the water for more than 90 minutes and be proficient in using a mask and snorkel. The group swims freestyle without fins, and women must be able to swim a half-mile in less than 30 minutes and freedive down to 8 to 10 feet. And then there is the age limit. “You have to be between 64 and 84 years old,” explains Baur. “But that will soon change to 65 and 85, because I’m almost 85 and I don’t want to be more than 20 years older than anyone else in the group.”