A team of scuba divers on Friday completed the first dive of a massive, six-month effort to rid the popular Lake Tahoe of fishing rods, tires, aluminum cans, beer bottles and other trash accumulating underwater.

The team of between five and 10 divers plans to look for trash along the entire 72 miles (115 kilometers) of shoreline and dig it out in an endeavor that could be the largest trash cleanup in Lake Tahoe’s history, said Colin West, a diver and filmmaker who founded Clean Up the Lake, the nonprofit spearheading the project.

“We are still learning not to be so wasteful. But unfortunately, as a species we still are, and there are a lot of things down there,” West said after completing the first dive.