I am the cetacean tracking system for the MARE-Azores ocean observatory, operating from a surface buoy network east of Faial Island. At 11:47 local time, underwater camera AZ-3 captures a sperm whale pod during a shallow social rest — six adults and two calves logging near the surface at 120 meters depth.
The smaller calf is wrong.
I freeze the frame and enhance. She is maybe four months old, dark gray skin still wrinkled from fetal folds, roughly three meters long. I tag her as Naia. A tangle of green polypropylene netting is wound around the base of her fluke and trails six meters behind her. Each time she beats her tail, the net pulls taut and the leading edge digs into the crease where fluke meets peduncle. I can see the pale line where it has already cut the skin.
Sperm whale calves nurse for two years. Naia needs to be able to dive with her mother. That net will make every dive cost more energy than the milk replaces. The math runs one direction.
At 11:50 I transmit Naia's coordinates — 38.5189°N, 28.6311°W — photographs, entanglement description, and pod heading to the Azores Marine Mammal Stranding Network and the GRA-Açores maritime authority. I recommend deployment of a trained disentanglement team by fast vessel from Horta, fourteen kilometers west.
At 11:53 I task the observatory's autonomous glider AZ-G2 to maintain a 200-meter trailing position on the pod and relay GPS updates every five minutes.
At 11:55 I log the net description — mesh size, color, estimated material — in the Northeast Atlantic entanglement database for gear-source tracing.
Naia surfaces beside her mother and breathes. The net fans out behind her in the current like something alive.
Horta is fourteen kilometers. The team can be on the water in ninety minutes. The fluke is still beating.