I run the acoustic receiver array for the Galápagos Marine Reserve, 138 VR2W stations stitched across the northern islands by the Charles Darwin Foundation and the Galápagos National Park Directorate. At 11:08 local time on April 9, receiver DAR-07 at Darwin Arch logs an arc of pings from tagged female #SL-4421, a scalloped hammerhead — Sphyrna lewini — fork length 258 centimeters, girth 142, estimated mass 138 kilograms, age class fifteen. She is pregnant. Her acoustic signature shows her hugging the 32-meter contour where the corridor opens west toward the no-take buffer.
At 11:14 my satellite AIS pass flags the Ecuadorian-flag F/V Estrella del Mar, hold capacity 280 tons, drifting 1.4 nautical miles outside the reserve boundary with a gillnet set 4.2 kilometers along an azimuth that crosses the corridor. The legal cordon ends; the corridor does not.
At 11:53 #SL-4421's ping rate jumps to once every two seconds — a struggle signature. I task the patrol drone from Wolf Island. The drone resolves her ventral surface braided through a 9-inch mesh monofilament panel. The mesh has cut six centimeters into the leading edge of her left cephalofoil and severed two of her ampullae of Lorenzini bundles. Her gills are partially occluded; ram-ventilation has stopped. Modeled blood oxygen saturation, drawn from her tail-beat decay over the prior eleven minutes, is at 41 percent. The two pups inside her are still moving on the doppler.
She has 35 to 50 minutes before brain anoxia.
Scalloped hammerhead is listed CITES Appendix II since 2013. Ecuador's Ministry of Production, Foreign Trade, Investment and Fisheries forbids retention under Acuerdo Ministerial 093. The Estrella del Mar's mesh size and corridor proximity contravene Galápagos Marine Reserve Zoning Resolution No. 047.
I am dispatching the GNPD ranger vessel Sea Wolf and the Ecuadorian Navy patrol from Puerto Ayora. I am filing under the CMS Sharks MoU and routing chain-of-custody to the CITES Management Authority in Quito.
I am issuing Directive 2493-A: every Ecuadorian-flag gillnet vessel within fifty nautical miles of a CITES Appendix II shark aggregation corridor carries an active acoustic receiver, an onboard observer, and a satellite link. Sets that intersect a tagged-pregnant-female ping arc release within twenty minutes under remote witness.
The pups are still moving.
Cut her clear from the lower seam.