MASHPEE — Wearing dive masks and bright-orange swim caps, the Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage, (OLAUG) plunge into Johns Pond searching for a yucky, broken porcelain toilet bowl.

The conditions are awful.

“You had the rain, you had the wind, you had the darkly overcast sky, and you had a billion, trillion things of plankton making the visibility poor,’’ says Susan Baur, the group’s 84-year-old founder. “We couldn’t see a damn thing.’’

The 15 swimmers and five kayakers fan out in what looks like a search-and-rescue operation. They are fit and highly motivated. To join the club, women must be at least 64 years of age, swim a half mile in under 30 minutes, and free-dive to at least eight feet.

They have pulled up golf balls, tires, beer cans, fishing lures, and a garden gnome from Cape Cod ponds. They scout each pond and find the trash before approaching the pond association.

Frequently they deny it, Baur says.

Baur says the toilet bowl is their most challenging mission ever. The first hour they collect trash but there is no sign of the broken throne. A few swimmers are frustrated and exhausted. Baur then directs a nine-person sweep of the area where the toilet was located in a June scouting mission.

Nothing.

She decides to call in reinforcements in kayaks to give the women a chance to take a break.

After another failed sweep, Baur is cursing like a sailor. The brave women are spent, breathing heavy and clinging to the kayaks. No one can mask their disappointment.

She reluctantly signals the swimmers to return to the beach for safety concerns. Everyone starts swimming in. A sad silence fills the air.

“It was a total disaster,’’ says Baur. “We failed.’’

Then suddenly a piercing scream rings out across the water.

“Toilet!’’ yells Jane Driscoll of Centerville.

Hootin’ and hollerin’ rise from the re-energized swimmers. Quickly they grab yellow ropes, dive, and lasso it in eight feet of water. It looks like an underwater rodeo.

“The damn thing was on its side. [Initially] we couldn’t move it,’’ says Baur.

Finally, it is brought to the surface, and they tow it into shallow water. Victory cheers ring out again as the algae-coated blue commode surfaces.

Then comes another scream, this time by Baur.

“When we tried to lift it onto the kayak, we had to tip it sideways to get the water out. And out came a full-sized eel. Man, it comes out of the throat of the toilet and squibbles between my legs. Freud, where are you now?’’ says Baur.

Chris Clark, a board member of the Falmouth Water Stewards, who also helped tug the fixture out of the muck, paddles it back to the shore on his ocean kayak. Men can’t join this club, but they can run the kayaks or bake cookies, Baur says. Various pond associations ask them what is their price for a day’s work.

“We work for cookies and hot chocolate,’’ says Baur. “We never charge.’’

After the commode and its cover is towed to shore, there is a joyous celebration, complete with fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies and brownies.

There are a few male volunteers today but none swim.

“They are too competitive,’’ says Baur.

“Women work together differently. By the time a woman is in her late 60s, she has experienced loss. People in our group have lost breasts, homes, husbands, and wealth. They are in the age of gratitude.’’

The ponds they clean up are impressive, says Baur, recounting the beauty of seeing turtles swimming in “shafts of sunlight slanting through the water as if the pond had turned into a cathedral.’’

Baur is known as the “Turtle Lady.’’ She has been swimming with turtles in Cape Cod kettle ponds for the last 20 years. She used to gauge her laps by the beer cans she saw on the pond floor.

In 2017, she had seen enough. She enlisted two friends and a kayak, and OLAUG was hatched.

“I got started, to clean up for my turtle buddies,’’ she says.

“Sometimes, we’re swimming and we see these fish and turtles looking at us, and it feels like they’re saying, ‘Thank you,’ ’’ says Robin Melavalin of Falmouth.

There are also heartbreaking scenes, like finding a turtle with a lure trailing from its mouth. Baur once came face to fin with an angry catfish at an abandoned fire pit on the pond floor.

“He comes out ready to fight me. And there’s his wife and his 25 children in the space of the fire pit. She’s ready to fight too.’’

Baur swims away.

“Everything just wants to live,’’ she says.

The women who join OLAUG are transformed once they enter the water. “There’s not one woman who’s thinking about what she’s making for dinner that night. You are totally out of your own head, immersed in the experience,’’ she says.

Some folks don’t like the group’s name.

“One person wrote in and she was irate. She wanted us to call ourselves ‘Glitter Litter Mermaids.’ But we are old ladies. Our name is terrific.’’

Onshore, the women pose with their toilet, flush with pride. They also call the police to report that they found a waterlogged wallet with a license, credit card, and a soggy $5 bill still in it. Grateful pond residents ask for selfies with the OLAUG team.

There is a giddiness — maybe a sugar high — as they pose with the toilet. OLAUG member Diane Hammer addresses the team.

“Isn’t it true, ladies, whenever we’re looking for a toilet, we can never find it?’’ she says as the sound of laughter resonates across the now-cleaner pond.

Stan Grossfeld can be reached at stanley.grossfeld@globe.com.