Ian Rosenberger, former Undergraduate Student Government president and current member of the Koror tribe of CBS' Survivor: Palau, spent his first post-graduate year working with dolphins in Florida. That aquatic experience came in handy on last night's episode since he spent a good deal of it underwater.
Things started out rocky for the Koror tribe. First, the island they chose to live on turned out to be problem-prone, infested as it was with rodents of unusual size.
The group gradually devolved into a bit of internal bickering, initiated mostly by the snippy Caryn at firefighter Tom.
The next morning, Survivor host Jeff Probst announced the first tribal challenge of the episode: a gauntlet-like obstacle course that included dodging sandbags and swinging across miniature gorges.
Ian and the rest of Koror proved largely inept at this particular challenge and got destroyed by Ulong, the opposing tribe.
As a reward, Ulong won snorkeling equipment -- vital for gathering food on the islands, mostly barren except for coconuts -- and flint for starting a fire, something Ian's tribe lost in a capsizing incident at the end of last week's episode. "We kinda lost it," Ian said of the momentum gained by winning last week's immunity challenge. "We're the bad news bears, man. Our backs against the wall and we're coming on strong."
After enduring some motherly scolding by Probst, Koror set out to find the chest of flint and steel, lodged on the ocean floor, several dozen yards away from the island.
After several dives from the tribe's canoe, Ian finally spotted the chest. While he and the other tribe members scrambled to come up with a way of lugging the heavy chest up onto the canoe, Coby and Caryn paced pessimistically on the island, naysaying the other's attempts.
"It was 25 feet down and it was underwater," Ian said later, adding that during his dives he began to fear he would run out of breath while trying to secure a rope to the chest like a pulley.
Ultimately, Ian's deep-sea diving paid off and Koror retrieved the once-lost fire supplies.
"This is one of the happiest moments of my life," an ecstatic Ian said upon arriving ashore.
One further tribal challenge lay ahead for the exhausted Koror tribe, this one for immunity. The complicated challenge involved both tribes swimming out to a bowie and then diving underwater to pull a chest with a rope (slowly becoming a Koror ritual, it seems), and then taking the chest's contents back to the shore to spell out "Immunity" in Morse code.
The Koror tribe excelled at this challenge, thanks in a large part to the contributions of Ian and Tom, who teamed up in heaving their tribe into a lead they never relinquished.
For the second consecutive week, Koror won immunity and avoided having to vote one of their tribe members off the island.
We'll see next week if Ian's luck continues.
Teasers of the upcoming episode show tension arising between some members of Koror, but it's hard to imagine Ian facing any serious opposition, since at the moment he seems to be the backbone of the tribe.
