GREEN TURTLE CAY, ABACO, Bahamas -- Since 1984, Bahamian scuba diving instructor Brendal Stevens figures he has certified more than 5,000 divers. But three recent graduates of Brendal's Dive Center might have represented some of his biggest challenges. Two were young women from San Francisco who were petrified of sharks. The third was a gnome.

Fortunately, everything turned out for the best. The two twentysomethings, Kristen Luna and Holly Eurns, were certified as SSI open-water divers. As part of their checkout dive, they swam safely with Caribbean reef and nurse sharks.

The gnome was awarded an advanced Discover Scuba card -- pretty exceptional for a two-foot-tall statue made of plaster. But this was no ordinary little person -- it was the globe-hopping Travelocity Roaming Gnome.

''He had a fantastic time!'' said Eurns, the gnome's handler and a writer at Travelocity.com.

EARLY TRAINING

All in a few days' work for Stevens, 59, who learned to dive as a teenager in Nassau, then relocated to Florida to become a Gator (class of 1967; track star/mechanical engineering), and eventually somewhat of an honorary shark.

During the 1970s, Stevens worked as a civilian contract diver for the U.S. Navy, installing secret, underwater early detection systems to block Soviet submarines from entering U.S. waters. He also tested all sorts of scuba equipment, including the prototype of the modern BCD, or buoyancy compensation device that nearly all recreational scuba divers wear; and the rebreather, popular with technical divers and underwater photographers for the past decade.

After his Navy contract ended, Stevens opened his dive shop on tiny Green Turtle Cay in the Abaco Islands of the northern Bahamas -- conducting scuba classes, developing dive sites and running diving and sailing charters. His wife, Mary, runs the shop while he's diving, and he's assisted by dive instructors Jon Ward and Holly Ross.

One of Stevens' most popular and requested dive sites is known as ''Coral Caverns'' -- a network of colorful grottoes and swim-throughs populated by large numbers of tropical fish, as well as a few nurse and Caribbean reef sharks. It was here that Eurns and Luna were to do their final check-out dives and for the gnome to don a set of miniature dive gear for the first time. The gnome, being an inanimate object, was unflappable. The women, however, were a bit nervous.

''Every time I would think about jumping off the boat in open water, I would freak out,'' Eurns said. 'But Brendal put me at ease. He's not going to let anything happen to me. The fact that he was so calm, made me a lot calmer. He's always saying, `piece of cake, piece of cake.' ''

Said Luna: ``I was terrified of sharks. A year ago, I never thought you'd get me in open water. But I loved it.''

Besides swimming with a nurse shark and a Caribbean reef shark without incident, the women penetrated one of the garage-sized coral caverns that give the site its name, parting a shimmering, silvery curtain of glass minnows at the entrance.

They saw a large green moray eel baring scary teeth from a hole in the reef, and practically guffawed underwater when a Nassau grouper rushed up and kicked sand in the eel's face by using its pectoral fins.

SCENIC DIVE

There was brilliant-striped exotic lionfish dominating an overhang and a cornucopia of surgeonfish, parrotfish, snapper and grunt overlaying nearly every ledge.

''We've got so much marine life. Abaco has more fish per capita than anyplace in the world,'' Stevens said.

Hard to disprove, especially when the underwater panorama changes every couple of feet in 80-foot visibility.

After the dive, the women and their diminutive charge celebrated their dive course completion with an afternoon seafood picnic on an uninhabited island catered by Stevens and his crew. The divers dined on fresh lobster, fish and conch, and the gnome was presented with his first Goombay Smash.

One of the other divers helpfully drank the tasty rum concoction for him.

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