Meet the Women Over 64 Cleaning Up Cape Cod’s Ponds One Dive at a Time

 

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Every summer, a group of women over 64 dives into Cape Cod’s freshwater ponds to remove trash from the bottom. The Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage, or OLAUG, estimates that it has removed 6,000 pounds of garbage since forming in 2017. The group now has about 30 members and organizes around 20 formal dives each year, with each cleanup requiring careful planning around water conditions, wildlife, and safety.

Retired psychologist Susan Baur founded OLAUG after years of swimming in Cape Cod. She became concerned about the amount of trash accumulating underwater and its effect on wildlife, particularly turtles. In 2017, Baur and several friends began removing the debris themselves, recruiting a kayaker to carry the trash they pulled from the water. Someone jokingly described them as “old ladies against underwater garbage,” and the name stuck. What began with a handful of swimmers eventually became an organized volunteer group that cleans ponds from Falmouth to Chatham.

OLAUG holds tryouts that require applicants to be women over 64 who are proficient swimmers. They have to swim half a mile in under 30 minutes and repeatedly dive to depths of about 8 to 10 feet. Once they are in the water, a designated “beach boss” manages logistics and tracks swimmers, while kayakers collect debris as divers bring it to the surface. Another swimmer watches for snapping turtles and guides the group around them.

The preparation begins before anyone enters the water. OLAUG coordinates with local pond organizations and checks conditions before each cleanup, and the group has postponed dives when tests detected unsafe levels of cyanobacteria. During the warmer months, the volunteers typically clean about 20 ponds.

The trash varies from pond to pond. OLAUG members have recovered beer cans, golf balls, fishing lures, dog toys, shoes, tires, cell phones, and much more. Larger objects they’ve found include an 80-pound blue toilet and part of a Chevrolet Corvette. Baur has pointed to spent fireworks and car batteries as particularly concerning because they can introduce pollutants into the water.

For the women doing the dives, the work offers more than an environmental cleanup. The physical challenge and time underwater give members a demanding way to stay active and connect with one another. Marci Johnson joined after losing her husband and being diagnosed with breast cancer. She had felt isolated and struggled with the changes that came with retirement, but swimming and diving gave her a way to stay active alongside other women.

Other members have described the dives as absorbing enough to take their minds away from everyday concerns. Baur, who worked as a psychologist, has connected that experience to the psychological concept of “flow,” a state of deep concentration in which a person becomes fully immersed in an activity.

Nearly a decade after Baur and her friends first started pulling trash from a Cape Cod pond, OLAUG has gained popularity and even maintains a waiting list for prospective divers. Each season, the women return to the water, diving beneath Cape Cod’s ponds to retrieve what others have left behind. For OLAUG, the work is straightforward: get in, find the trash, and bring it back up.

Since 2017, the Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage has removed an estimated 6,000 pounds of trash from Cape Cod’s freshwater ponds, including golf balls, tires, fireworks, and an 80-pound toilet.

 

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Founded by retired psychologist Susan Baur, OLAUG has grown from a small group of friends into a 30-member volunteer organization that cleans about 20 Cape Cod ponds each year.

 

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The cleanups give OLAUG members a demanding form of environmental volunteer work while creating a community for women who want to remain active as they age.

Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage: Website | Instagram

Sources: Taking Out the Trash: These Old Ladies Are Cleaning Up Cape Cod; ‘Old Ladies’ are free-diving on Cape Cod. They’ve excavated 6,000 pounds of trash

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