When the excitement of the escape finally calmed down a bit, Bloat asked:

"So. Where to, now?" The question was addressed to Gill, who was so caught up with the happiness, the feeling of freedom and all the richness and the beauty all around him, didn't even hear it the first time around.

"Hey, Gill!"

"Oh?" He turned. "Oh, well, I suppose, to the east of the-"

"Where's Flo?!" Deb's screams made the water shake. She was flouncing back and forth, screaming all the time, and her body's movements were creating a play of light and shadows on the sand, which made Bubbles scream "Bubbles! Bubbles!" and throw himself to the dancing sunbeams. With the help of Jacques' whiskers, it was possible to finally hold her in place. Because she was thrashing around no more, the sunbeams had also stopped dancing and Bubbles calmed down.

Gill explained to her that Flo had went to the Coral Reef before them in the Nigel's beak and that in order to meet her, she needed to get there first. That didn't seem to convince her very much, but at least she stopped screaming.

Gill said then:

"I suppose, we go to the east of the Coral Reef. That's the only direction I really know. My parents, siblings and I, we lived in a little cave there, so I guess, it's my home".

They started their journey, and right away it turned out to be much less fun than Gill had expected. He was pretty old, his fin was injured and it was difficult to get used to the ocean's currents again, but even so, he was swimming much quicker than everybody else. Jacques and Peach moved across the sand dunes with difficulty, too, because they constantly had to go up- and downhill, unlike in the tank, where the floor was strictly horizontal. Gill tried to cheer them up with pointing out the beautiful seaweed or corals, but all he had got was silence. The gang was clearly afraid of the sheer magnitude of the ocean, and their silent fear had finally culminated in Deb's breakdown.

She was muttering angrily to herself at first, then she fell silent for a long time, and then, after the journey had already tired everybody up, even though they hadn't covered a large distance, she just broke down crying loudly.

"I… I… I'm afraid! The ocean's gonna crush me! I don't wanna be here anymooooore…" she was wailing, and it was impossible to get anything else from her.

Then Gill understood it was time to stop. They had quickly found a lovely oasis of seaweed and stones, and made it their camp for the night.