

He fails to achieve the dangerous task, however, and the tank fish sink into dejection. As they both recover in open waters, Nemo continues his getaway attempts, sure that his timid father would never risk the open water to rescue him. Before they reach the end, however, Dory is stung and lies unconscious. Marlin is resistant to the stings, but Dory is not, so to save his oblivious friend, Marlin pretends to play a "game" with Dory in which she bounces harmlessly over the jellyfish tops, thus avoiding the dangerous tentacles.

Although Dory tries to warn Marlin, she forgets the details and follows him above the trench, which serves as a jellyfish bed. Now aware that he needs Dory's help, Marlin apologizes and swims off before he can hear the school's advice to avoid the upcoming trench. Soon annoyed by her blithe chatter, enthusiasm and memory lapses, Marlin informs Dory that he would like to travel alone, and her subsequent sobs attract the chivalry of a school of fish, who scorn Marlin but provide Dory with direction to the Sydney harbor. While Marlin distracts the angler, Dory slowly reads the dentist's address on the mask, and is thrilled to discover that she can remember it. In the dark, both are spellbound by the light of a predatory angler fish, but manage to spot the mask. Back in the sea, Marlin swims, with Dory's encouragement, to the ocean depths to find the fallen mask. Gill's plan calls for Nemo to swim into the filter and jam it with a pebble, after which the dentist will clean the tank, transferring them to plastic bags in which they plan to hurl themselves out the window and into the harbor below. The tank members soon "initiate" Nemo into their society and form an escape plan to save Nemo from being given to the dentist's niece, Darla, a notorious fish abuser. The other aquarium inmates, including Jacques the shrimp, Deb, a starfish named Peach and Bloat the blowfish, welcome the boy, but when he becomes stuck in a filter, their gruff leader, Gill, insists that Nemo escape without help, demonstrating his own damaged fin as proof that a handicap need not impede him. Meanwhile, Nemo is transported to a fish tank in the Sydney office of dentist P. The scent of her blood mesmerizes Bruce, who chases the fish into a wrecked ship, and although Marlin and Dory escape, the chase sets off a mine explosion. Chanting "Fish are friends, not food," the three group members welcome Marlin and Dory, and while Bruce recounts the tale of his father's abandonment of the family, Marlin spots a diver's mask and, sure it belongs to the human who captured Nemo, inadvertently cuts Dory in his excitement. As Dory explains that she suffers from short-term memory loss, a menacing shark named Bruce forcibly escorts the pair to a twelve-step meeting designed to cure fish-eating addictions. She offers to help him follow the ship, which she saw pass by, but after several minutes, Marlin realizes they are swimming aimlessly. Horrified, Marlin rushes to his son's aid, but the boat speeds away too quickly for Marlin to keep up with it, and when he begs for help, only a cheerful blue tang named Dory responds. Although he bravely swims into the open sea, which his father has taught him is perilous, touches the boat and turns back in triumph, a scuba diver nets him before Nemo can reach safety. To prove that he does not need coddling, Nemo accepts the other kids' dare to swim out to a ship just past the reef drop off. On Nemo's first day of school, Marlin embarrasses him at the schoolyard by anxiously fussing over him and insisting on cautiousness. Soon, Nemo is a happy, curious boy, who lets neither a malformed fin nor his father's overprotectiveness dampen his energy. Cradling his remaining son, Nemo, Marlin vows to protect him forever.

Just then, however, a barracuda attacks the anemone, knocking Marlin unconscious, and he awakens to discover that Coral and all the eggs, except one, have been eaten. Although Marlin frets that his four hundred as-yet-unhatched children will not like him, Coral assures him that he will be a wonderful father. In Australia's Great Barrier Reef, a clownfish named Marlin and his wife Coral take up residence in an anemone at the edge of the coral reef.
