˙˙00˙ ˙00˙01˙03˙01The Sisjo Expedition˙00 ˙ ˙ ˙03˙02PUH / AGONY ˙01˙01˙00˙ ˙Since I took my divers' license in 1992, I have carried out more than two hundred dives in my favourite fresh water lake, lake Sisjön. With its seven hundred metres across, it is not much of a lake (compared to, e.g., Lake Vänern, or Lake Michigan), but it is, nevertheless, ˙02my˙01 lake. This is where I learned to swim; this is where I saw my first fish ever (a perch); and this is where I dive. Many other divers I know keep making a fool out of me for that, believing that real divers (true men, I suppose) only dive in salt water. Well, I live only some three kilometres from the sea, so I can't blame it on the distance. However, I have always thought of the ocean as a hostile place, and I have always preferred (as will I always prefer) the calmness and reliability of Lake Sisjön. Moreover, my home is even closer to Lake Sisjön than to the sea, my having to walk for not more than fifteen minutes to go there. Throughout the years, Lake Sisjön and I have developed a special kind of cooperation based upon the fact that if I do something good for it, it will do something good for me. This holds true for, e.g., revisions at the university, and those slogan competitions I participate in, as long as I clean the lake's bottom from junk material or perhaps provide it with some shells from the ocean (the carbonate ions of the shell, as you surely know, play an important role in the buffering of acid rain, thus protecting the life of the lake). I have, as a matter of fact, removed over 1000 kilogrammes (well, it IS true) of junk from the bottom since 1992, most of which was glass bottles, aluminium containers (such as beer cans), plastic objects (shampoo bottles, juice cans, etc.). You just would not believe what people throw in the water, you just would not. Since my (scuba) dives range from say two to fifteen metres from the surface, I realized in June 1997 that I have never been to zones nearest the shore of the lake. I have been to every imaginable place of the lake except for the area closest to land (say, from 0-5 metres from the shore). There is no point in scuba diving there, anyway, since it is all too shallow. I understood that it was in my duties to clear this area, too, from litter, so I made up a rescue plan, which said that I'd simply swim around the lake just outside its shore, picking up everything that did not belong there. My old man, I understood, had to walk beside me on land with a huge plastic bag (as my small UW bag does not hold much compared to what I had planned to find) and my younger brother was to swim some three metres from me, minimizing the risk of missing important objects. Furthermore, my plan said that the whole deal had to be accomplished in three rounds, as I estimated that the swim would be some three kilometres and take approximately three hours to finish (and Sweden's waters aren't that warm even in summer). Moreover, I had to carry it out early in the morning, because Lake Sisjön is a well-known lake, and in summer time a lot of people go there for bathing (and I'm not the kind of guy who likes to be seen collecting litter in a plastic bag together with the morepart of my family). Sure, I'm doing a good thing, but it nevertheless looks somewhat odd in the eyes of strangers (or, even worse, somebody I knew). On June 16, 1997, the first round was finished. I left bed at 06:30, woke my father and brother, ate breakfast (not much) and left home 07:00. At 07:30, I and my brother had donned our wet suits and jumped in the water with one UW bag each. My old man waited for us every time the shore structure allowed him to reach the water, and he emptied our bags in his large one. One hour later the whole thing was set, and we had cleaned the first one third of the lake. The next third was accomplished during the following morning, and the last third the day after that. Summing it all up, we had found much less junk than expected, probably meaning that things people threw in floated out a bit before they sank (the density of objects out there is - or shall I say was - much greater). Moreover, we had not found anything really cool or valuable, which we had hoped to find (a wallet had been nice, as had a precious necklace). I wrote down all the objects and then sorted them (as good as possible) for recycling. The beer cans and glass bottles yielded us some 100 SKR, meaning a per capita salary of say 8.30 SKR per hour (for a total of six hours), and my brother, a keen fisher, could add some of the fishing tackles to his fishing equipment, but that's about it. For your pleasure, here is the complete list of findings from the Lake Sisjö Expedition, June 16-18, 1997. ˙02105 beer cans 76 glass bottles 7 fishing tackles 7.5 tennis balls 2 big pieces of metal (2/4.5 kg) 34 plastic objects 21 plastic bottles 5 batteries 3 fishing lines 5 golf balls 1 circuit board 0.5 cyclops 1 BIC lighter 1 dart board 2 darts 1 schampoo lid 0.5 thermos 1 teat (comforter) 3 broken fishing rods 0.5 skipping-rope 1 string 1 leather belt 1 aluminium object 1 can of cinnamon 2 cables (0.5 m. each) 1 cork 1 bikini (empty) 1 shoe 2 pair of socks 1 Häxan (metal polish) 1 snorkel 1 coffee can (plastic) 1 lawn-mower rotor blade 1 broken coffee holder 1 deck of playing cards 1 "POLISEN" ball point pen 1 0.5 m. metal sword (toy) 1 bike-lock key 1 plastic toy car (green) ---- about 68 kilogrammes ˙01The world is a rotten one. I find little comfort in the fact that I have at least done what I could with my part of the world. My work, though, is not finished. Besides from my normal scuba diver is Lake Sisjön (beginning in April), I have planned for a Lake Oxsjö Expedition as well (when the water gets warm enough). I hope to be able to give it to you in the new issue. Take care until that time. ˙01