Hi everyone, it’s Liah again.  It has been quite busy at The Island School lately.  With the Research Symposium coming up, we have been working very hard on our scientific posters. All of the groups have done an amazing job thus far and the Research Symposium is where we can finally show off all of our hard work to scientists of many fields, and civilians.  Speaking of research class, the Deep Water Shark and Shark Physiology caught a Big Eyed 6 gill the other day. Very few people will ever be able to say that they were able to see one of these deep sea dwellers, congratulations to them!

Yesterday, we had the opportunity of going on a traditional Sunday free dive; I eagerly took up this opportunity.  Maxey first took us to the coral head accurately named Cathedral for its church-like shapes and qualities, along with its immense beauty. Maxey is always fond of going to “church” on Sunday. On this specific day there was a school of jack inhabiting this reef.  It was a phenomenal site to go down and have the large fish swarm around me; it was like something out of a National Geographic movie.  After leaving this site we swam over to the wall, the wall is where the Exuma Sound drops of to thousands of feet.  We only free dove the 65 foot side but we could peek over into the immense blue depths of the Exuma Sound.  While we were free diving we saw the silhouettes of two Caribbean Reef sharks in the distance, it was amazing to be able to see something that 3 and a half months ago would have terrified me.  Now seeing a shark is a wonder.  As I took I immersed myself for my last free dive of the day I started to relate free diving to our semester here.  You start off unsure, nervous, you start to go deeper into the semester and you want to stay down forever.  You see and experience amazing things but you know you have to go up, no matter how much you want, how much you feel like you need to stay down-you’re running out of breath, out of time. As I returned to the surface and looked towards the sunrise reflecting off of the water.  The red sky shown bright against the aqua water.  I look around, looking at the community, all my friends, this is a place like no other. This is home.