Hello all. I, Taylor Fasolo, am now taking over the position of Blog Writer for the next couple of posts!

The magic continues here at Island School as we students work our way through our fourth week. On Tuesday, every student either ran towards the nearest settlement, Deep Creek, or swam a mile towards the Cape. Then many prepared for a Marine Ecology class, where we would be diving to our specific patch reef that we choose the previous week, studying invertebrates and biodiversity. This amazing form of research, for me, is not only more in-depth, but is also much more fun because you are down in the water, learning about the things you are studying face to face with them. After drying off from the dive, many students went to their afternoon Art class, in which we are creating our “Art for Advocacy” pieces. After having attended a few plastics lectures and participating in beach cleanups, the Art classes are taking plastic that we found on the beach and turning it into a piece that gives the message of sustainability.

Wednesday, after the students had a well deserved sleep-in, we rushed to our morning classes, which differed between all of us. Then the students hit the field with their own research classes. My research group, Conch, went to Sunrise beach and conducted transects along the shoreline to see how many Juvenile Queen Conch we could find. Although it was windy and a little cold (probably just 70 degrees but whatever), we found 47 juveniles, which is a huge step towards our research of finding where they mature and where to put a marine protected area in.

Just over these two days, so many amazing things happened that even remembering them all to write in this blog was a challenge. Everyone continues to grow that much closer and learn incredible things about each other, Eleuthera, and The Island School.