No Tahoe Tessie, No Mafia Victims: What a Camera Really Found at the Bottom of Lake Tahoe
For generations, the bottom of Lake Tahoe — the massive, high-elevation lake that spans the border of California and Nevada — has been a realm of speculation and myth. It’s been rumored to hide everything from sunken forests to proof of unimaginable crimes committed by the Mafia in the 1960s. But on September 5, 2025, a custom-built robot camera descended nearly 1,600 feet to the bottom of the lake, showing footage for the first time ever of what lies beneath Tahoe’s depths.
“Deep Emerald” ready to deploy on Lake Tahoe. Photo: The Tahoe Fund
The remotely operated vehicle (or ROV) named “Deep Emerald” was purpose-built for deep water exploration in pitch-black water. It has eight thrusters, extremely powerful LED lights, and a 4K camera that can capture details in areas devoid of any sunlight. It was connected to a boat on the surface with a 1,960-foot fiber optic tether so researchers aboard could watch the action in real time. It was engineered by Restoring the Lake Depths Foundation with the support of grants from the Tahoe Fund and Martis Camp Foundation.
While the lake is studied on an ongoing basis to monitor everything from visibility and water clarity to trash deposits, this was the first time the goal has been to see what’s at the bottom.
At close to 1,600 feet deep, the water appeared empty, with experts describing it as “barren and silty.” There were no aquatic plants, fish, or signs of life, though there are in the shallower areas. This was expected, as the lake’s cold bottom temperatures (around 40 degrees Fahrenheit) slow biological activity, making it nearly impossible for algae or plants to grow. The extreme depth means it’s rarely disturbed by weather or boat activity, so sediment and silt settle on the bottom and stay there. With its high-powered lights, Deep Emerald was able to see quite far, even though the bottom is pitch black. (Tahoe’s visibility is around 50-60 feet closer to the surface.)
The rover went into the water “almost in the middle of the lake, just slightly south of Tahoe City,” says Founder and Executive Director Lindsay Kopf of the Restoring the Lake Depths Foundation. The location is one of the deepest around the lake, allowing Emerald to reach the true bottom, and Kopf estimates it traveled about 400 to 500 meters across the lakebed over the course of its 12-minute deployment.
While the rover didn’t find evidence of “Tahoe Tessie,” the lake’s mythological marine beast, it did find something else interesting: “starfield”-like silt patterns and sediment depositions, and material floating just above the lakebed. “This material deposited on the bottom that we could see enters the lake from the streams and settles to the lake bottom,” Sudeep Chandra, professor of limnology at the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe, explained to Matador Network.
He estimates the sediment is six or seven percent organic material, but mostly inorganic materials like pieces of the surrounding granite rock. Seeing so much of that material is great for maintaining Tahoe’s clear water, he says, as it means it’s settling instead of getting mixed back into the water column. “So while it may look boring to fly through the deep bottom of water at 1,500 feet,” Chandra added, “it is actually important to see this material accumulating along the bottom.”
One of the other big takeaways from the research was less about the rover itself, and more about the interest around the footage. A representative from the event told Matador Network that nearly 3,500 people tuned in to watch the dive’s livestream, with more than 30,000 additional views over the following three days. It shows there’s huge interest around not just Lake Tahoe as a destination, but the mysteries surrounding Lake Tahoe’s watery depths. “Plus, it’s always, for a scientist, great to see a place that most of us have never gone down to before,” Chandra noted.
Rumors abound about Lake Tahoe’s depths
Washoe stories tell of mysterious “water babies” living below the surface near De-ek Wadapush, also called “Cave Rock.” Photo: Wirestock Creators/Shutterstock
As the second-deepest lake in the US, and the largest alpine lake in the country, visitors and residents have long wondered what lies at the bottom. Naturally, there have been plenty of rumors over the centuries, with just enough believability in them to keep the stories going.
A widely circulated “fact” is that bodies disposed of in Lake Tahoe can’t decompose due to the cold, deep water, fueling stories of perfectly preserved corpses well below the depth rescue personnel could reach. Often, these bodies are said to be the alleged victims of Mafia hits or casualties of casino-era crime. It’s a story fueled by the occasional discovery of remarkably well-preserved bodies of drowning victims, often recovered years after they went missing. Scientists have confirmed that Tahoe’s cold temperatures can slow decomposition, but the idea of dozens of victims lying under the surface for decades has no actual proof.
Untold horror, according to Jacques Cousteau
A popular urban legend holds that Jacques Cousteau explored Tahoe’s depths in a submersible and emerged so bothered by what he saw that he refused to talk about it, famously saying, “The world isn’t ready for what’s down there.” However, there is no evidence Cousteau ever visited or dove in Lake Tahoe, and Cousteau’s acquaintances have said that would be very unlikely to happen. However, Cousteau’s son, Jean-Michel Cousteau, has traveled to Tahoe several times and lectured in the area on the importance of studying and preserving Tahoe’s delicate ecology.
Tahoe Tessie and other creatures
The legend of Tahoe Tessie, a lake monster inspired by Loch Ness’s “Nessie” in Scotland, is one of the more well-known Tahoe mysteries. Sightings have been reported for over a century, with the first printed report appearing in the “San Francisco Call and Post” newspaper in 1897. Today, Tessie is mostly understood to be less of an actual creature in the lake, and more of a cartoon dragon you’ll find on Tahoe-themed coloring books and T-shirts.
However, tales from the Washoe people (Tahoe’s Indigenous inhabitants) talk of powerful water spirits and warn of dangers beneath Tahoe’s surface. Some Washoe tales concern sacred or mysterious places deep below, and “water babies,” creatures that can lead humans to watery deaths, are said to inhabit the area around Lake Tahoe’s Cave Rock. It’s possible these legends could have been misinterpreted by early white settlers — or embellished to keep them away — eventually leading to the “Tahoe Tessie” myth known today. 
Matador Network's Blog
- Matador Network's profile
- 6 followers
