The cobalt waters of Lake Tahoe have long captivated the public, helping drive the area’s massive tourism industry and even attracting urban legends about what lies in the cold, shadowy depths.
Theories have ranged from an aquatic creature named Tessie to perfectly preserved bodies dumped by the mafia decades ago.
This week, Tahoe enthusiasts got to take in a much rarer view of the lake. On Friday, thousands of people tuned in to see a remotely operated vehicle travel down to the bottom of one of the country’s deepest lakes, at more than 1,500ft below the water.
“Few people have had the opportunity to explore what’s under the surface of Lake Tahoe, the second deepest lake in the US,” said Amy Berry, the CEO of the Tahoe Fund, an environmental non-profit.
The lake, which has 72 miles of shoreline between California and Nevada, is one of the clearest in the world. The lake and the region’s ski resorts have made the area an extremely popular tourist destination, with more than 2 million visitors a year.
But its popularity has created challenges. In 2023, a team of volunteers that included scuba divers and snorkelers removed more than three tons of trash from the lake after the Fourth of July holiday. Other cleanup efforts have utilized remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to remove trash from the lake, including one named Deep Emerald – or Emmy – used on Friday’s dive.
“Emerald is actually a very rare ROV capable of going to Tahoe’s deepest points,” Lindsay Kopf, the executive director of Restoring the Lake Depths Foundation, during the live stream. The foundation sponsored the event with the Tahoe Fund.
Over the course of about 30 minutes, viewers watched as as Emmy, outfitted with a thruster system, LED lights and a 4K ultra-high-definition camera, descended and toured an area of the lakebed. It had previously been used to remove litter and identify invasive species. As it trudged over the lakebed on a fiber-optic cable, sediment drifted across the screen like shining stars in a dark sky.
While it moved through the water, experts explained how the ROV worked and delved into the geographic history of the lake.
“Many people don’t know that Lake Tahoe is an ancient lake. It’s 2 to 3 million years old. It makes it perhaps one of the oldest, if not the oldest, lake in North America,” said Sudeep Chandra, a professor in the biology department of the University of Nevada, Reno.
A fisher pilots a boat along Echo Lake, located near Echo Summit in the mountains above Lake Tahoe. Photograph: George Rose/Getty Images
The lake bottom is akin to a human’s lungs, Chandra said, receiving materials from the watershed, processing them and returning them back into the water column.
At the far bottom are unique sub-ecosystems like in the oceans, such as deep-water plant beds and unique species endemic to Tahoe that eat bacteria and algae from the plant beds and feed fish, he said.
Before the livestream the No 1 question organizers received was whether viewers would see dead bodies in the lake, Berry said.
“I’m so glad to say we have not seen any dead bodies down there,” she said.
The live stream largely showed cloudy material at the lake’s bottom, but in past expeditions there have been tires and even an “eerie”, perfectly preserved birthday balloon, Kopf said.
Organizers urged viewers to support environmental efforts to protect the lake and maintain its clarity.
“We just hope everyone who got to join us today takes a little piece of Tahoe home with you wherever you’re watching this,” said Berry. “Come out, enjoy Tahoe. Maybe try not to dive to the bottom of the lake. But we hope everyone will do their part to help us take care of Tahoe for many generations to come.”
There was no sign of Tessie yet.
