Lake Tahoe sub mission seeks pollution, climate answers

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. -- A team of submariners that spent the month of May exploring Lake Tahoe and examined, among other things, evidence of an earthquake fault that may have ruptured thousands of years ago, is hoping the operation is just the beginning of their underwater explorations.

Scott Cassell, the sub's captain and founder of the non-profit Undersea Voyager Project, says his team has plans for a five-year mission to gather information and develop ideas to help restore endangered bodies of water around the world.

The goal, Cassell says, is to collect data and attract sufficient attention to prompt people and governments to halt pollution and overfishing and take other actions to protect threatened bodies of water.

A two-person submarine spent the past month cruising Lake Tahoe, examining earthquake faults, ancient submerged trees and beds of invading clams that threaten the lake.

"I think it's a very useful tool," said John Kleppe, a University of Nevada-Reno scientist who for years has researched submerged trees, some more than 3,000 years old, in Fallen Leaf Lake just west of Lake Tahoe. The trees, which grew when the lake level was lowered by lengthy drought, provide a "very good record of climate change," Kleppe said.

Lake Tahoe, 1,645 feet deep and second to Oregon's Crater Lake as the nation's deepest, has problems, including sediment pollution and algae growth diminishing the lake's famed clarity and invasive species that could forever alter its ecology, says Cassell, 47, a commercial diver, explorer and filmmaker from Pasadena, Calif. He says he has been fascinated with aquatic depths since seeing the movie 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea when he was 6.

Several other explorations are planned in the coming months in preparation for the five-year mission Cassell and colleagues hope to commence in 2011.

Cassell said he dreamed up the Undersea Voyager concept along with veteran submariner Andreas Rechnitzer in 2003 as the pair worried about failing fisheries, the sea's impact on climate and the fact that many of the Earth's oceans are unexplored. He says he decided to make the effort his "life's mission" after Rechnitzer died in 2005.