Divers fish out more than 100 kilos of rubbish from lakes in Tatras

More than 100 kilos of rubbish was pulled out of four lakes in the Tatras last week as the summer tourist season in the mountains came to an end.

Dozens of drivers dredged up a total of 112 kilograms of waste from Štrbské, Popradské, Velické, and Nové Štrbské pleso as part of the 29th Clean Waters event at the end of the summer tourist season on the last day of September, Martina Petránová from the Tatra National Park Administration (TANAP) based in Tatranská Lomnica, said.

The majority of the rubbish - 82.5 kilos - was fished out of Štrbské pleso, the TASR newswire reported. A team of 22 divers pulled up plastic cups, food packaging, construction waste and glass bottles from the lake.

Among their more unusual finds were three metal rods that were probably once used to break ice, a bridal veil, a badge with a Tatra theme, a drone, and a shoe.

The least amount of trash was found in Nové Štrbské pleso, where six divers collected four kilograms of garbage. Another 9.5 kilograms of waste ended up on the shore of Velické pleso, and 16 kilograms was found in Popradské pleso.

"We were not pleasantly surprised by the amount of waste the volunteers managed to pull out today," Peter Spitzkopf from the TANAP Administration in Tatranská Lomnica, which is the main organiser of the Clean Water event, said.

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