Troubled waters

They are lured by turquoise waters, the stunning kaleidoscopes of sea life, and the addictive tranquility of exploring it all.

Richard Neely:  I've never seen anything so fantastic, so beautiful.

Matt Lauer: How would you describe the role it plays in your life right now?

Ally Dalton: Uh - it is my life right now.

Ally Dalton, 40, and Rich Neely, 38, share a deep affection for diving. Five years ago, Rich ditched his career as a cabinet maker in Britain to become a dive instructor in Thailand.

Richard Neely:  I was looking for a change in my life and somebody passed me an open-water diver manual. And I thought "Wow. I have to do this."

Matt Lauer: It was an epiphany?

Richard Neely:  Absolutely. And I was hooked.

Ally owns a successful pub and restaurant in Sacramento, California, but after taking a dive vacation to Thailand last year - and meeting Rich - a casual hobby became her passion.

Ally Dalton: Decided last year to get my dive master certification, which is a professional level status and I've spent the last eight months mostly diving, working in the diving industry.

Matt Lauer: With wrinkled fingers?  (Laugh)

Ally Dalton: Yeah.  Pruned fingers. Very different to what I'm used to in the restaurant business. 

In May, the couple planned a scuba trip to Indonesia’s Komodo Island. On the way, they stopped to visit family and friends in Australia -- where the Great Barrier Reef, a diver's nirvana, was too tantalizing to resist.

Ally Dalton: We said "How can we not go diving on the Great Barrier Reef when we're so close?"

Ally and Rich booked a 3-day excursion on this catamaran, called "Pacific Star."  It would take them  from Airlie Beach, to the Whitsundays - 74 islands in the heart of the Great Barrier Reef - and then to the pristine waters of Bait Reef.

Matt Lauer: This trip, when you looked at it on paper, even though it was somewhat spontaneous, this is not a death-defying, thrill-seeking, adventure-laden journey. This is a chance to blow off a little steam and have some fun.

Rich Neely:  Absolutely.

Ally Dalton:  Absolutely. 

But what should have been a relaxing, scenic tour of this underwater Eden would become a terrifying nightmare, one eerily similar to the movie "Open Water."

It began uneventfully enough. At 7 p.m. on Wednesday, May 21, the couple boarded the boat, which was manned by a skipper and three crew members. Among the 20 passengers, Ally and Rich were easily the most advanced divers, especially Rich -- a master trainer with 2,600 dives under his belt.

Matt Lauer: If you're a dive instructor and a dive tour operator, are you a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10, or does anybody ever get to be a 10?

Rich Neely:  I feel 100 percent confident and comfortable, that must be a 10. I'm a big hulk of stainless steel and rubber hoses and black neoprene, I guess.  And the fish must laugh at me, but I feel 100 percent comfortable.

On Thursday, the Pacific Star moored at Whitehaven Beach. Ally and Rich photographed themselves marveling at the white, silica sands. But they were most content below the surface, turning their camera on all the magnificent fish -- and sharks. 

Ally Dalton:  We had seen sharks on every dive.

Matt Lauer: What kind of sharks did you see?

Rich Neely:  Small reef sharks about four, five feet, maybe six feet a couple of them. Small.

Matt Lauer: So first couple of days of this trip seem pretty routine. Couple of nice dives.

Rich Neely:  Yeah. 

Ally Dalton:  A-huh.

Matt Lauer: Saw a couple of sharks.

Rich Neely: We read a book. We laid in the sun. We watched the horizon.

On Friday, May 23, the couple took two morning dives, and planned another two after lunch. To squeeze in the fourth, they needed to stick to a tight schedule.

Ally Dalton: We had to be in the water by 2, out by 3. You have to be out of the water for a surface interval before you get back in the water again. So that meant we'd be out by 3, back in the water by 4:30.

Matt Lauer: Because by 5:30 in this area, the sun's going to start to go down.

Ally & Rich Neely: Exactly.

Matt Lauer: And you'll lose daylight.

Ally Dalton: Right.

Matt Lauer: Most people in dive circles know that generally when a dive begins, there are instructions given out by whoever's running the dive. What were you told?

Rich Neely: From the tour leader, we were told that we would be doing a dive at Paradise Lagoon. That was pretty much it.

Matt Lauer: Did that tour leader tell you "Here's where you can go. Here's where you can't go. Here's the distance from the boat you can travel. Don't go anything above that?"

Rich Neely: Not at all. The only part of that was here is where you should go.

Matt Lauer: So, "make sure you see this."

Rich Neely: Yes.

Ally Dalton: He actually specified a particular marker to look for, which was through the passage and out of the lagoon.

Matt Lauer: But the one rule you guys did know, one hour.

Rich Neely: Yes.

Matt Lauer: Surface after one hour and if after that hour, you did not return to the boat, someone from the boat would come get you.

Rich Neely: Exactly.

Matt Lauer: How would they come get you, in a dinghy-

Rich Neely: They pick us up in a dinghy.

Matt Lauer: Tanks are full. Your gear is ready. You slip into the water. What are the seas like?

Ally Dalton: Pretty calm.

Rich Neely: Yeah.

It was a perfect dive - they snapped photos of unusual fish, even this group of sharks.

Rich Neely: A group of seven sharks together.

Ally Dalton: Gray reef sharks.

Rich Neely: For several minutes, very close to us, which was great.

Matt Lauer: A few minutes before 3, the hour up, Rich did something he always does at the end of a dive - inflating a buoy like this one to signal the boat that they were preparing to surface.

Rich Neely: It has six meters of string with a small stainless steel weight on the bottom. Inflate it with air and it shoots to the surface.

Matt Lauer: Up the string you go, You reach the surface. What's the first thing you remember seeing? Was everything fine?

Rich Neely: Everything's fine. We can see the boat.  And we can see the yellow dinghy returning to the boat.

Matt Lauer: So all is at it should be?

Rich Neely: Absolutely.

But not for long. Ally and Rich were in danger, their perfect dive about to become a descent into terror.

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