The flasher sank faster than expected.
Not drifting.
Not hesitating.
Just dropping—
until it disappeared completely.
Gone.
There was no dramatic chase.
No retrieval attempt.
Only the quiet moment after,
when the water closed and nothing came back up.
That was when the discomfort surfaced.
“I realized I wasn’t just watching harm happen.
I was participating in it.”
It wasn’t about losing a tool.
It was the realization that something meant to help a diver
had just become another piece of plastic left behind—
unrecoverable, unaccounted for.
And worse:
it had happened without resistance.