Operation to remove Nearly 1,000 tires from the Saint Lawrence River

Two divers in Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary, off Savannah, Georgia, on Monday, October 28, 2019. Led by explorer and underwater filmmaker Nathalie Lasselin, volunteer divers are surveying the bottom of the St. Lawrence this weekend near Beauharnois, on Montreal's south shore, to pull out of the water hundreds and hundreds of tires that have been polluting the aquatic environment for decades. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

Unusual flippered feet are making their way into the Saint Lawrence River this weekend.

Led by underwater explorer and filmmaker Nathalie Lasselin, volunteer divers are combing the riverbed near Beauharnois in Montérégie to remove hundreds of tires that have been polluting the aquatic environment for decades.

These tires come from a breakwater made up of 40,000 tires installed in 1990 to expand the Beauharnois marina, which has since sunk. The tires were bound together with rubber straps containing urethane, a chemical that, at high concentrations, can be harmful to health.

Additionally, there is pollution from microplastics caused by the tires themselves and the plastic that surrounded them when they were placed in the water.

About twenty carefully selected volunteers make up Lasselin's team. The divers must be highly experienced, as they need to work solo with "zero visibility" and face risks like hitting objects or getting entangled in fishing lines, according to Lasselin.

She hopes to remove between 1,000 and 1,500 tires from the river during this 15-day mission.

This is a new type of mission for Lasselin, a member of the non-profit organization Aqua Sub Terra, dedicated to the protection and promotion of aquatic and underground resources.

This operation could become an annual event, as the exact number of remaining tires from the original 40,000 is unknown but is expected to be much higher than the thousand Lasselin and her divers aim to recover.