As I write these lines, we are flying on a small plane bound to Honolulu. Our expedition to Kingman is finished. Most of our team is sleeping, reading, or listening to music in the only introvert environment of the last three weeks. The silence of the return flight contrasts with our excitement three weeks ago, when we were filled with anticipation. Today we are filled with experience and memories.

We just came back from our third dive. The sea was so flat that, if it hadn't been for little Isla Maxima, we would never have known we were on an atoll. The breakers were absent. All we could see was a spectrum of blues, the sky merging with the sea.

We were especially happy today. We have finished all of our data collecting, accomplishing more than we expected at the beginning of the expedition.

Last night was rocky; the Searcher swung with the swell all night long. That made us especially eager to jump in the water and dive a hundred feet below the surface, where the swell is barely discernible. We are tired after eighteen full days of diving, and waking up in the morning is increasingly difficult; but there is something that keeps us going. It is the realization that we cannot waste a minute in this unique atoll. Laziness and idleness are alien words here, and we don't have enough hours to dive as much as we would like. The mere thought of meeting the sharks again, or hovering over a coral infinity, triggers our adrenaline.

Tyler Rowe and I camped on Isla Maxima, the small island on the eastern arm of Kingman, last night. We wanted to experience the isolation of an ocean dot made of coral rubble and giant clamshells. The moon rose as the sun set in the opposite corner of the sky. Two large spotted eagle rays hovered over a reef colored with pink coralline algae. A dozen brown boobies glided over the water, up and down, back and forth, as if on an endless aerial rollercoaster.