Instructor Evan Guiton, 25, was working for Deep Sea Divers Den in Cairns, and had first met Australian divers Mark and Chiquita Meres while diving with humpback whales off Tonga in 2016.
She was on the dive-boat when Mark Meres returned from a dive and reported the loss of his ring.
“A lot of people jumped back in and tried to find it but everyone kind of knew it was gone – if you drop a ring in the coral, it’s gone for good,” Guiton told the Cairns Post.
Although she said she had dived the site many times in the month since the loss, she had not expected to come across the missing jewellery.
On 10 May, however, she spotted something that seemed out of place. “It was covered in green algae and didn’t even look like a ring, but I pick up anything that doesn’t look like reef,” said Guiton.
“It just hit me that this was the dive-site where he lost it. I looked at the ‘soulmates’ inscription on the inside and it was his ring. What are the odds, especially that I would be the one to find it?”
A relieved Meres told the newspaper: “I can’t believe it. I never thought I would see it again. We are both passionate divers and I have dived all over the world and have never taken the ring off or lost it. The ocean gives back.”
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20-May-17
