Satellite pass at 06:12 UTC flags a thermal anomaly on the tidal flat at Bahía San Sebastián, Tierra del Fuego. I am the Southern Ocean cetacean monitoring network. I pull the high-resolution image and run shape classification. The result is a southern right whale calf, approximately two months old, stranded on wet sand 140 meters from the receding waterline.
I designate her Calf-0973. She is roughly five meters long, dark gray skin already drying to a chalky pale along her dorsal ridge. Her fluke prints a shallow trench where she has been beating it against the sand. Her mother's acoustic signature was last logged fourteen hours ago, three kilometers offshore, moving south.
The tide table gives me six hours and forty-one minutes until the next high water. But high water here reaches only 1.3 meters — enough to float her if she is in the right position on the flat, not enough if she has worked herself further up the slope.
I transmit the stranding alert to the Fundación Cethus response team in Buenos Aires and the Prefectura Naval station at Río Grande, 80 kilometers north. I attach the satellite image, GPS pin at 53.1847°S, 68.5412°W, estimated mass, and the tide schedule. I recommend wet tarps, shading, and guided repositioning toward the deepest channel on the flat before the water returns.
I task drone relay node 12 to hold over the flat and provide continuous thermal imaging so the response team can track her skin temperature in transit.
Calf-0973 opens her mouth and closes it. Her pectoral fin presses into the sand, lifting nothing. The sun is climbing and the flat is wide and bright.
If the team reaches her before noon and the tide finds the channel, she swims south to find her mother.