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ATTLEBORO - It's a round object associated with taking a plunge, and Attleboro's Mike Whyte found it at the bottom of a 200,000 gallon tank at Boston's New England Aquarium.

Whyte, a part-time diver for the aquarium, recovered a wedding ring Sunday that a Beverly man had lost in July.

Bob Pirrmann had dropped his ring in the four-story Giant Ocean Tank during a rare public dive in the Caribbean coral reef exhibit, and thought it was gone for good.

But during a scheduled tank cleaning last weekend, Whyte found the silver band under several inches of sand, sandwiched between two stalks of finger coral.

"I thought it was ironic that it was found between two fingers," Whyte said. Pirrmann had figured his ring was lost forever, and bought a new one, Whyte said.

Yet, Whyte handed the lost ring - "a little bit tarnished, but it was fine" - back to Pirrmann Thursday at the aquarium.

"It was a great feeling," Whyte said. "Somebody would've found it eventually. But it was kind of a needle in a haystack."

Whyte said the mementoes divers typically hand to patrons are things like shark teeth, which become souvenirs for kids.

"It was nice to give something back that meant a lot," he said.

The aquarium divers had kept an eye out for the ring since Pirrmann dropped it while petting a 560-pound sea turtle named Myrtle three months ago.

Pirrmann was among the employees of a Boston-area ad agency participating in an Aquarium launch celebration for the summer exhibit "Sharks and Rays," aquarium spokesman Tony LaCasse said.

"From time to time, it would come up in conversation: 'Did you find it?'" Whyte said.

"It kind of became one of those, 'It'll show up sometime.' After a while, you start to wonder where it went to."

Divers feed the 700 animals in the tank four times a day, he said. Whyte, 54, joined the aquarium as a volunteer diver in 2001 and became a part-timer three years ago.

He always works Sundays, he said.

This particular Sunday, Whyte was doing the tank's scheduled cleaning, vacuuming food and other debris.

At one point, the shifting sand revealed what Whyte initially thought was a coin.

So he vacuumed more food away. And then, he realized he'd discovered Pirrmann's lost treasure.

Whyte said he then placed the ring on his finger.

"I didn't want to lose it a second time," said Whyte, who otherwise works as a maintenance electrician for the Chrysler Corp. in Mansfield.

MICHAEL GELBWASSER can be reached at 508-236-0439 or at mgelbwasser@thesunchronicle.com.