Coffee cups, tyres and textiles at the bottom of Lake Ohrid: the municipality pays divers to clean up, but who's throwing it there?

From the surface, Lake Ohrid is a postcard. From the bottom, it's a landfill with a view. Members of the "Amfora" Diving Centre cleaned the stretch from the "Gradište" campsite to "Veli Dab" and pulled out plastic bottles, cans, glass, car tyres, scraps of textile and - to complete the picture - broken coffee cups.

The operation was funded by the Tourism and Local Economic Development Department of the Municipality of Ohrid. That's good news and an admission at the same time: the local government pays divers to fish out what someone else threw into the lake that Macedonia sells as the pearl of its tourism.

In footage published by the "Akvatek" Diving Centre, a freshwater crayfish can be seen among the rubbish - one that the published information says is on the endangered species list. According to UNESCO, Lake Ohrid is around two to three million years old and home to more than 200 endemic species. This isn't about looks - the plastic and metal are lying in a habitat that exists nowhere else.

The problem isn't new. Divers have warned before that hundreds of kilograms of waste end up on the bottom every year, and UNESCO itself lists poor solid waste management among the threats to the natural heritage of the Ohrid region. Diver Nikola Paskali says some people use the lake as a rubbish bin and calls for stricter controls, fines and a total ban on plastic.

That's the heart of the matter. One clean-up removes what has already been thrown in, but it doesn't stop the next bottle. The municipality pays for the clean-up - but has anyone ever paid a fine for throwing a tyre or a bottle into Lake Ohrid?

"The environment we live in depends on all of us," said the people at "Akvatek". True. But when something depends on everyone, in the end nobody is usually held responsible. If the divers come back next year, the question is whether they'll pull out less, or more.