Swimming With Sharks - Transcript

What kind of people would enter a shark tank armed with nothing but a piece of hollow plastic pipe? Certified scuba divers like Bob and Vicki Thomas volunteer to submerge themselves into the task of scrubbing the aquarium's tanks and cleaning the display windows.

[Vicki Thomas] "I love to dive and this is the best diving there is in Omaha."

[Bob Thomas] "Just getting into the water, it's a whole different world. It's very quiet, very serene, very peaceful. And it's a good stress release. Besides that, it kind of gives something back to the community. It's kind of a win-win situation. We get to dive, we get to stay wet, and we help out the zoo."

[Kathy Vires] "We interviewed people for quite a while to find the appropriate people to dive in our tanks because this is underwater custodial work. It's not playing with the fish."

So how do they clean a saltwater tank that is 17 feet deep and contains over 850,000 gallons of water? The divers can't use chemicals or cumbersome cleaning machines that might be harmful to the marine life. So they must resort to rather primitive methods.

[Bob Thomas] "We wipe it down with a baby diaper so it doesn't scratch."

[Vicki Thomas] "We also have suction cups that we put on the glass so that we can move a lot easier and hold onto so when we're scrubbing, we're not floating all over the place."

It's not all work. While they are cleaning, the divers get to interact with all sorts of animals in the aquarium, including the human variety.

[Vicki Thomas] "Why don't you put your hand up against mine so you can show how thick it is? It's about four inches thick."

"And we can pretty much see everyone in the tunnel when we're in the water, so as you can see the fish, we can see you inside the tunnel, too."

The non-human animals can be a lot of fun, too.

[Vires] "The animals seem to adjust to the divers very well. In fact, they're so used to them being in there, we do have some animals obviously that are more friendly than others and that enjoy the divers. "

[Vicki Thomas] "I like the stingrays here, when they float down. Sometimes they come close and you can actually pet the underneath of the stingrays. "

And the divers don't even mind being around the creatures with teeth.

[Bob Thomas] "Everybody's so afraid of the sharks, but if they really get to be around them, they're pretty docile. "

[Vicki Thomas] "We do have tenders who watch out for that while we are cleaning, and we're also aware of that ourselves and we need to watch out behind us or above us before we actually come on top of the tank and make sure we're not going to come up and, you know, wear a shark hat."

Although the divers are visiting these fishes' home, they won't be staying for dinner.

[Bob Thomas] "I love to eat seafood. But not these guys."