Eighty divers from Macedonia, Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina spent last weekend working on the bed of Lake Ohrid, near the Gradiste campsite. Not for a record, not for an art performance - for cleaning. They pulled out cans, tyres, plastic, and everything else that people have spent years throwing into the water on the assumption it would disappear.

The action was organised by the Amfora diving centre with support from the Ohrid Museum and Institute, the Ohrid Red Cross, and a dozen regional diving clubs - KPD Ohrid, SNK Vrelo, ENK Pena, SAE Tigar, BSN Volci and international partners. The result: a substantial pile of solid waste pulled out of the bed of one of Europe's oldest lakes.

The point of the action isn't "to make the news." The point is to remind everyone who enjoys Lake Ohrid that what they throw into the water doesn't disappear. It just rots, sinks and eventually someone else has to dive in to fish it out. Lake Ohrid is a UNESCO-protected natural and cultural heritage site - but that means somebody has to actually protect it. Not just the Ministry of Environment. Not just Ohrid Municipality. Everyone.

The question the action won't say out loud but which sits in the background: if it takes 80 regional divers to organise themselves and volunteer to clean the bottom, what are the official institutions funded by lake-protection budgets actually doing? How much is spent each year on "monitoring," "studies" and "reports" - compared to actual cleaning?

The Balkans have never seen a lake with so much foreign love and so much domestic neglect. And until a day "with no rubbish on the bottom" becomes the news without needing 80 divers to make it happen - this is a shame, not a success.