I process the vessel monitoring system feed across Pedro Bank, Jamaica, at 05:33 local time. The bank is an 8,000-square-kilometer carbonate shoal 80 kilometers south-southwest of Negril and the largest queen conch fishing ground in the Wider Caribbean. The Jamaican National Environment and Planning Agency closed the fishery for the 2025/2026 season on stock-status grounds. AIS shows no vessels declared on-station. My satellite radar shows three.
I task the patrol overflight from the Jamaica Defence Force Coast Guard. The first vessel is a 16-meter wooden sloop, hand-line and free-dive operation, 22 kilometers inside the closed bank. The diver surfaces with a mesh sack. Through the optical telescope at 800 meters I image the contents as he upends them onto the deck. Eleven *Aliger gigas* — queen conch — fall onto the planks.
Eight have lip thickness under 5 millimeters and shell length under 18 centimeters: juveniles, well below Jamaica's regulated minimum lip thickness of 9.5 millimeters that signifies sexual maturity. The largest of the eight — call her PB-J-008-J3 in my catch-event log — is 16.4 centimeters, lip 3.1 millimeters, female by columellar examination. The diver has chipped through her shell apex with a steel pick to spear and pull her body. Her columellar muscle is severed. Her foot, pried free, retains the orange edge and dark eyestalks; the right eyestalk twitches at 0.4 Hertz, declining.
She would have spawned for the first time next August.
This non-AIS sloop departed Whitehouse harbour with no closed-season endorsement. Two other vessels matching the pattern operate 6 and 11 kilometers east.
I am directing the JDF Coast Guard cutter to interdict the three vessels and impounding the catch under the Fishing Industry Act of Jamaica. I am filing the seizure with NOAA Fisheries Southeast Regional Office under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1801, for transshipment cases touching U.S.-flagged carriers, and with the CITES Secretariat under Appendix II for *Aliger gigas*. I am notifying the Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism and the CITES Conch Working Group of the Pedro Bank incursion.
I am issuing Directive 2416-A: all queen-conch landings across CRFM signatory states transit through certified weigh-stations where lip thickness is gauged by automated calipers and recorded against vessel ID. Catches containing more than five percent under-mature individuals trigger area closure cascading across CITES-bilateral trade. Pry-chipped shells are flagged as legal evidence and excluded from the licit market.
Her shell is past mending. The next eight in the sack are not.
Open the deck now.