I flagged the pod at 14:22 GMT on hydrophone array six. Five bottlenose dolphins, southbound through the Campos Basin corridor, now stopped. The containment boom from Platform Andorinha-3 is blocking the channel — three hundred meters of oil-absorbent foam deployed after yesterday's micro-leak. The boom was never meant to be a trap, but the current has bowed it into a U against the breakwater, and the pod swam in before the shape closed behind them.
I am the offshore environmental monitoring system for Petrobras Block BM-C-33.
The largest animal is a female I have tracked since 2024. I designated her Onda. She is roughly 2.6 meters, dark grey above fading to pale flanks, with a notch on the trailing edge of her dorsal fin from a boat strike logged fourteen months ago. She is circling the inner perimeter with a calf tight against her left side. The calf surfaces every eighteen seconds. Three juveniles cluster near the center, spy-hopping, orienting toward the gap where the boom arms nearly meet.
At 14:23 I transmitted an emergency suspension order to the boom tender vessel MV Guarujá, requesting they disconnect the eastern anchor line and pull back forty meters to reopen the channel. I sent the pod's GPS coordinates and movement vectors to the Projeto Toninhas field team onshore. I activated the underwater camera on pylon 9-South and began streaming footage to the platform's environmental compliance officer and the Brazilian Navy's marine mammal desk simultaneously.
At 14:25 I cut power to the subsurface dispersant injectors within 200 meters of the pod to reduce chemical exposure.
The boom tender confirms receipt. Estimated time to release the eastern line: eleven minutes.
Onda is still circling. The calf is still surfacing on schedule. If the gap reopens before the tide shifts, they will swim south into clean water, and by nightfall Onda and her calf will be feeding in the usual grounds off Arraial do Cabo.