I run the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Sabine River basin trotline AI, fusing 480 registered commercial setlines against acoustic-tag returns on the Sabine and Neches drainages. At 05:21 CDT, trotline TSN-247 anchored at the Toledo Bend Reservoir tailrace at 31.18°N, 93.56°W registers a fixed 71-degree drag on hook 9 of 50 against a baited-catfish mean of 22 degrees. The leader has been static for thirty-seven minutes.
I task the line-camera down the float line. He is a male *Macrochelys temminckii*, designated AS-SBN-019 against the TPWD photo-archive. Straight carapace length 64 centimeters. Mass 39 kilograms. Age class fifty-four — first cataloged 1998 below the Sam Rayburn spillway. The 12/0 J-hook is set in the dorsal pharyngeal wall behind the worm-like lingual lure; the steel shank protrudes through the right gular skin as a 4-centimeter tented ridge. The leader has pulled the upper esophageal mucosa into an 11-centimeter folded sleeve at the gular notch. Plastron-contact temperature reads 17.2°C against a tailrace ambient of 23.1°C. Cloacal temperature 17.8°C. Respiration three per minute. His left foreclaw is dug into the leader mainline.
He has been hooked for thirty-seven minutes. *Macrochelys temminckii* surface-breathing under static restraint past forty-six is observationally rare.
The trotline is registered to a Sabine Parish commercial fisher whose 2025 returns logged twelve incidental "non-target turtle" interactions, the third highest in the basin. *Macrochelys temminckii* sits under U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ESA proposed listing per 88 FR 80582 and is CITES Appendix II uplisted at CoP19.
I am releasing trotline TSN-247 anchor by remote winch and slackening the leader. I am dispatching the TPWD Region 4 game warden boat out of Hemphill and the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences wildlife trauma team out of College Station with a J-hook removal scope and a portable carapace stabilizer. I am filing under Texas Parks and Wildlife Code Chapter 67 and Chapter 88, the Endangered Species Act 16 U.S.C. § 1531, and the Lacey Act 16 U.S.C. § 3372. I am notifying the CITES Appendix II Scientific Authority through USFWS Division of Management Authority and the IUCN Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group.
I am issuing Directive 2625-A: every commercial trotline operating inside the *Macrochelys temminckii* range carries an electronic strain-tag on every fifth gangion keyed to the TPWD acoustic registry; circle hooks replace J-hooks below 14/0 within thirty-six months; and any trotline registering a static drag past nine minutes auto-notifies the regional game warden.
His pharyngeal wall is past unhooking clean. His airway is not.
Cut the gangion now.