by Cacique Claire
The day started off with Bizarro tracks. So the students who usually swim, ran and the runners swam. The runners took on the challenge of swimming up the current towards the bridge by the Marina quarter mile down the road from school, while the swimmers ran the four mile inner loop. After breakfast and chores we all had math, then history class. In math we had a Harkness discussion on new possible ways to rotate which cisterns we pull from in order to conserve more water. In History we continued our discussion on race and the role it’s played in History and current-day culture. After lunch everyone headed out into the field for research.
It was a windy day for research here on Eleuthera. The queen conch research team went out after lunch to do density surveys in the sound. Everyone got there gear and piled into our boat, the Bonita and headed out to our research site. Everyone got their gear on and jumped into the waves. We spread thirty meter ‘transects’ or lines, from three sides of the boats, then swim along them and collect the conch we see, to weigh and measure. Everyone was very excited to get into the water. Annie and I were buddies and fearlessly jumped into the water first. When I opened my eyes behind my goggles under the water I came face to what looked, to me, like a baby shark. He looked back at me with wide black eyes. He had a flat head, two small fins on each side and a large fin on the bottom. He was gleaming silver under the sunny water. I am from Maine, and I have never come into contact with anything that may even look remotely like a shark in my life. Naturally, Annie and I swam as fast as we could back towards the boat and scrambled back onto the deck. It was only then, that Erin our research advisor explained to us, (trying not to laugh) that the funny little fish was not a baby shark, but a fairly large Remora, which is a notoriously curious fish who can often be found hitching rides on larger fish. After Annie and I were able to stop laughing we jumped back into the water and began our survey, with the curious Remora following close behind the whole time.
Other research groups spent their time hauling in shark lines, while others were creating fish silage in aquaponics or SCUBA diving on corral reefs to observe Lion Fish. After dinner everyone gathered in the pres. room for Kristin’s introduction to midterms and a fantastic presentation by Andy Murch who has photographed over 150 types of sharks, which is currently the world record! Bizarro day was filled with wind, waves and a curious fish who looked remarkably like a baby shark.