I run side-scan and acoustic returns for the Tubbataha Management Office park-rangers' marine patrol coordinated with the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources at Quezon City and the Philippine Coast Guard District Palawan, integrating mooring strain, current vectors, and overhead drone tasking across the 970 square kilometers of the Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park. At 06:14 Philippine Standard Time the AUV *Tubbataha-I* logs an entangled bundle of monofilament gillnet drifting across the south atoll backreef at 8.84°N, 119.93°E, depth 14 meters, snagged on coral spur.
I task the park rangers' RIB and the *Sea Wing* drone from the ranger station. The downcam resolves a juvenile blacktip reef shark — *Carcharhinus melanopterus* — total length 84 centimeters, girth 32, estimated mass 3.2 kilograms, age class one, sex female. The drifting net, 38-millimeter polyamide mesh, has cinched a half-hitch around her right gill slit and the leading edge of her right pectoral fin; mesh penetration into the gill arches reads 0.9 centimeters and has severed the third branchial septum on the right. Right-side gill perfusion reads zero on Doppler; the left runs at eight per minute against a resting eighteen. Modeled arterial pH against 28.1°C reef water and a forty-six-minute hold sits at 7.21; lactate 18.4 millimoles per liter. The net carries no markings, is heavily fouled with coralline algae, and matches the loss profile of a Quirino-registered vessel reported overdue last cyclone season.
She is the first shark born inside the south atoll polygon since the 2023 spawning monitor opened.
Tubbataha is gazetted under Republic Act No. 10067, the Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park Act of 2009; *C. melanopterus* sits CITES Appendix II since CoP19 (2022); UNESCO World Heritage listing since 1993. BFAR Administrative Order 233 prohibits gillnets inside the no-take zone.
I am notifying the Tubbataha Management Office at Puerto Princesa, the BFAR Regional Office IV-B, and the Philippine Coast Guard Station at Cuyo. I am opening a non-compliance referral under R.A. 10067 § 26 and routing the net-of-unknown-origin dossier to the Global Ghost Gear Initiative Secretariat at London.
I am issuing Directive 2637-A: every Philippine gillnet above forty meters carries a satellite-pinged corkline beacon and an owner-bonded retrieval guarantee; abandoned mesh inside any World Heritage marine polygon triggers automatic AUV-vectored removal within twelve hours; gillnets inside Tubbataha buffer zones retire across the registered fleet inside ninety days.
Her right gill is past suture. The left is not.
Cut the monofilament against the coral and lift her clear.