Today was the day that we all got to experience the long anticipated run-swim lead by the Island School founder, Chris Maxey. Numerous sources had warned us that this exercise would be very difficult but a large portion of the group ended up really enjoying themselves. We all felt a sense of accomplishment as we tagged the flagpole coming in from our last leg of our run-swim route.
After a filling meal of delicious breakfast-pizza, the class was ready to split off into two groups to begin our work with the shark team. One of the teams started out by placing the long-line into the water, which would hopefully be able to catch a deep-ocean shark. The other team released a group of lemon sharks back into the ocean that had provided the shark team with some data in their research. We finished all of this work with a much needed lunch break. Once lunch was over, we were ready to get started on our next activity: snorkeling at the aquaculture cage. This seemed to be a group favorite as there were many big fish to see and there was the challenge of seeing who could dive down far enough to touch the cage.
After we had explored the cage, some of us went back to check the long-line to see if we had caught a shark. We checked the line and to our delight we had caught a mature, female Cuban Dogfish Shark. This was very exciting because this was the first shark we had seen from that depth. The group worked hard to get this shark into a cage so that Brendan, one of the shark researchers, could continue his work with studying the survivorship of rereleased sharks.
At around 4:30 we all began our daily exploration time, where we are free to explore Cape Eleuthera. Some went down to the marina to pick up a snack but a few students lucked out and got the chance to swim with 24 reef sharks. Though this might sound scary, we heard nothing but words of excitement from these students because they got to have a very rare experience.
We concluded the evening with a night wade on the beach right outside of our dorm. Though the water was quite cold, we began to see a number of nocturnal critters that helped us take our mind off of the cold water. For example, we found some fish called silver sides, which have translucent sides that they use to appear less visible to predators at night. We all had tons of fun today and we are all looking forward to the day to come!
-Tyler & Isabella
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