10/29/2026
Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage Break all Records for 2026
OLAUG is a group of women 65 to 86 who free dive in the ponds of Cape Cod to remove trash. In Falmouth, they work with the Falmouth Water Stewards to make sure that the swimmable ponds in Falmouth are free of broken glass, golf balls, b**r cans, old construction material and other trash. This past summer they cleaned six ponds in Falmouth—several of them twice—and what they removed astonished even them.
Two cleanups took place in Coonamessett Pond in East Falmouth. In the first, a sunken dock was pulled from the water, and in the second, hundreds of golf balls were picked off the muddy bottom one by one.
“That was an exhausting dive,” said Susan Baur, founder of OLAUG and Board member of FWS. “It’s not swimming back and forth that tires you; it’s the constant holding your breath and grabbing golf balls off the bottom. We removed several cinder blocks and a tire too. We heaved approximately 400 pounds of trash off the bottom.”
In addition to cleaning Coonamessett, OLAUG members tackled Nye Pond where they found a rusting motorbike, Round Pond, Fresh Pond, Grews Pond and Jenkins Pond which they clean each year. The TV show Chronicle was filming as the motorbike came up in pieces dragged ashore by women black with mud. OLAUG also hosted the BBC, Persistent Productions of Rockport, The Daily Show, The New York Times, and Boston Channel 25.
Two members of the Old Ladies also scouted Shivericks Pond in downtown Falmouth in hopes that grade schoolers could watch an operation. Unfortunately, the water in the pond is so brown from tannins that there is not enough visibility to see what lies on the bottom. Nevertheless, the scouters tripped over a bicycle and a car tire as they waded out and removed both.
Across the Cape and Plymouth OLAUG made 22 dives this season and removed an estimated 9,000 pounds of trash. They will be back next year keeping Falmouth’s Ponds clean.
All photos Courtesy of OLAUG. All taken at Coonamessett Pond this year.
