Lost ring found on finger coral

Diver finds band in aquarium tank

A diver discovered a lost treasure in the waters of the New England Aquarium on Sunday.

In July, Bob Pirrmann, a 36-year-old from Beverly who is an associate director with the Boston ad agency Mullen, was allowed to guest dive in the aquarium's Caribbean coral reef exhibit after his company created a marketing campaign for the tank. The campaign showed sharks among Boston landmarks like the Hatch Shell and the Charles River.

Pirrmann, a certified recreational diver, was petting a 560-pond sea turtle named Myrtle, one of 700 creatures in the 200,000-gallon Giant Ocean Tank, when his wedding ring fell into the deep.

On Sunday, three months later, part-time aquarium worker Michael Whyte, 54, was vacuuming the four-story tank when he saw the silver glitter of a round object resting, ironically enough, on a piece of finger coral. When the sand pulled up, Whyte saw the object and knew it was the lost ring. He put it on his finger for safekeeping and finished his cleanup before alerting his supervisor.

"It was one of those things where I thought, 'It's got to be here someplace,' " Whyte said last night from his home in Attleboro. "But it was like a needle in a haystack."

Pirrmann will be reunited with his wedding band this morning at the top of the Giant Ocean Tank. Pirrmann and Whyte will meet for the first time and dive together to see the spot where the ring was found.

Pamela Coatti, 37, Pirrmann's wife, said last night that she was not angry when he lost the ring.

"I thought if you're going to lose it, you might as well lose it somewhere interesting like in that tank," she said.

Whyte said he has never found a ring in the tank's depths before, that he usually gathers only shark's teeth from the bottom. The tank's top is open to the public, so visitors' belongings sometimes fall in.

"We have drawerfuls of sunglasses," he said. "One time, a baby spit a pacifier, and when I went down to get it, a porcupine fish had it in its mouth."