Ohrid Underwater Club – 40 Years of Lake Ohrid

The Ohrid Underwater Club for 40 years has been the guardian of Lake Ohrid. Over the years, despite all the challenges and pressures, divers have carried out numerous environmental actions and huge amounts of waste have been removed. They say people's consciousness is difficult to change, and diving is a way of life. Young people are not interested in diving as it requires discipline, but also expensive equipment. The association has a large number of members, but quality, ready to act in every situation. This was emphasized at today's celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Ohrid Underwater Club, which was within the third diving congress.

« We are a specific association that has been guarded by Lake Ohrid for 40 years, water spaces across Macedonia with its own funds, with its own effort – says Goran Balevski, president of the club.

– I am glad that we have managed to survive all these 40 years regardless of problems and pressures. We are not a popular sport, but we are a sport that is a way of life. If you are slightly submitted with all the divers we are like one family. Diving shares a medium that no sport is gone in, ie you share air. You have to have perfect confidence in other divers. We have all these 40 years have done many actions and no actions across Macedonia on water areas where members of the Underwater Activities Club, underwater demining, environmental actions, drowning crash, trainings, are proud, 40 members, which we all have been able to keep the club, Macedonia – Balevski said.

Their first target, he says, are their environmental actions and carry out at least four annually in which various waste is removed.

– In recent years we see that we have some success in raising the environmental awareness of the citizens, but it is not satisfactory. The lake is still too polluted, especially not disappointing that the part where we think the lake is cleanest is quite polluted, the move from Pestani to St. Naum, where they are Trpejca, where we are the most beautiful beaches, and we are mostly cleaning in recent years. We plan to place an environmentally friendly container here where there will be our divers who will continuously clean the lake. We will see how much we will succeed in the whole story. The club is recognizable by environmental actions, after alerting all irregularities. We have been environmentally friendly on other lakes throughout Macedonia, Dojran, Prespa, Mavrovo Lake. I do not know if there is a water area where we did not participate with water actions – emphasized Balevski.

There is not much interest from young people to dive, he says, but there is interest in helping environmental actions.

– Diving is a very specialty sport and requires giving up many things. Training must be passed, some habits such as smoking, getting out late at night, so that anyone can be ready for diving. The goal of the club is to have no huge divers, but to be quality. We are trying to win more young and quality potential divers for which we have an instructor who deals with training. The equipment is also quite expensive and if the whole logistics is free in the club, yet the equipment is at the expense of the diver – added Balevski.

Emil Jovanovic from the Ohrid Underwater Activities Club emphasized that last year five environmental actions were carried out for cleaning Lake Ohrid.

The actions take out very solid waste, plastic, glass, even stoves, boats broken as much as we can. I do not know if the environmental awareness is changing, every year it is increasingly alarming. There are more and more waste. We try as much as we can, but whether people will change, it should take a lot of time – Jovanovic said.

It is an honor to attend an event to mark the four decades of dedication and work of the club for the city of Ohrid, for the environmental activities they are carrying out, and are aimed at protecting Lake Ohrid, said in attendance to the President of the Ohrid Municipality Council, Percho Bozinovski.

The award awarded by the Municipality of Ohrid, the highest charter of the City of the Club for underwater activities is proof that all members and activists are dedicated to protecting Ohrid and Lake Ohrid. The Municipality of Ohrid will always support such events as the underwater club itself which is part of the Sports Program with approved financial support for all activities planned during 2025.

The event was attended by numerous divers from clubs in the country, sharing interesting diving, equipment and underwater medicine topics.

Among them was the only diver in Macedonia who uses hydrogen in diving, Ljubomir Gligorov says this idea of ​​nourishing is generally not very accepted because hydrogen is flammable and explosive gas.

– For this reason when filling the bottles there is a huge risk of an explosion, if the procedures are not respected, and there are simply no such procedures. At first I created procedures for filling hydrogen with hydrogen, adding oxygen, ie making a hypotic mixture containing only four percent oxygen. And in these conditions, hydrogen is not excellent or flammable. The problem with this mixture is that it can be used exclusively from 40 meters to 300 meters depth. Unlike the helium mixture, this mixture has narcotic potential, but with the addition of helium it is possible to dive to huge depths and not to narcosis. There is a big difference in diving. Helium diving procedures are quite different, and when diving with hydrogen it is necessary to make transit gas up to 40 meters. When creating this transit gas, I had many problems. At one point it happened that the spit was burning, but over time I balanced the gas and made it much more fatable with the hydrogen mixture. Worldwide the use of hydrogen is a rarity, the only one in the state that uses it for diving. There are people who have tried to use it around the world and who unfortunately did not survive. I use it regularly and according to the records I have read with such a number of dives I am the only one in the world – says Gligorov.

Slobodanka Jakimovska from the speleo diving club « Vrelo » from Skopje points out that the feeling of diving in a cave for her is specifically the most beautiful, especially Matka in Vrelo.

– We have environmental actions at the Matka Canyon, so there are many tourists and throw a lot of trash in the water and clean it regularly. We are trying to find collaboration with private companies whose products are thrown into the water, financially support, but we rarely come up with such readiness. We invest ourselves and do our own environmental actions. Definitely Macedonia has Ohrid, the pearl of Macedonia, has our cave, but Ohrid has its own beauties even for beginners in diving can see the beauties of the lake under water, which is otherwise experienced. As divers we are very little, primarily because diving requires a great deal of willingness to invest in training, equipment and training, constant improvement and upgrades. We are trying to attract additionally young people who will continue to dive and love the water just like we love it – Jakimovska points out.

At the ceremony, the Underwater Club awarded gratitude and recognition to all who contributed and support diving.

Tomorrow the club announces a diving excursion by boat and diving at the Zaum site. The entire event is in the limitation of the Ohrid Underwater Activities Club.