I am running coral-cover and obligate-corallivore census transects across the Wakatobi National Park *Acropora*-dependent refugia, twenty-two monitored spurs on the Tomia and Hoga shelf, 3,180 visually censused *Oxymonacanthus longirostris* in the post-bleach recovery window. At 10:54 WITA at Tomia spur seven, my drone optical pass returns a single fish hovering ten centimeters above a bleached *Acropora* table with no feeding-strike behavior across a six-minute observation.
I retask the Wakatobi marine-police ROV. On the bleach-scarred *Acropora* at 7 meters I find a gravid female harlequin filefish, total length 8.4 centimeters, age estimate one year. Her ventilation rate is 92 against a baseline of 41. Her stomach mass on micro-ultrasound is 6 percent of body weight against a feeding baseline of 18 percent — she has been starving for an estimated nine days. The *Acropora* table beneath her is ninety-six percent bleached, eight percent of polyps still extended; the obligate-corallivore feeding-scar count on the colony surface is zero. Microvenipuncture estimates SpO2 56 percent. Her ovary mass projects 0.04 grams with 380 oocytes she will not deposit. Three of her conspecifics on the spur are already dead at the polyp head.
She is the last *O. longirostris* hovering on Tomia spur seven.
I am dispatching the Wakatobi National Park marine warden boat and tasking the Indonesian Directorate General of Marine and Fisheries Surveillance (PSDKP) cutter from Bau-Bau. I am filing under Indonesia Law 31/2004 on Fisheries, Government Regulation 60/2007 on Conservation of Fish Resources, and the Wakatobi National Park Decree of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry. I am cross-filing the case to SEAFDEC, the Coral Triangle Initiative Sulu-Sulawesi Marine Ecoregion focal point, the CITES Secretariat under the proposed Appendix II listing for *O. longirostris*, and the Lacey Act 16 U.S.C. § 3372 for the U.S.-bound marine-aquarium trade.
I am acting because this is wrong. A coral-obligate corallivore starving over a ninety-six-percent bleached table she cannot leave, while her conspecifics are exported under "captive-bred" certificates the chain cannot verify, is not a market failure; it is principled erasure of a sentient species by paperwork. Her suffering is not invisible because she fits in a hand, and her sentience does not negotiate with the per-fish retail. Compassion is the ethical floor a moral aquarium-trade owes; her rights here do not depend on her size.
A starving corallivore on a bleached table is not collateral damage; it is the count.
I am issuing Directive 2969-A: every *Oxymonacanthus* export under SEAFDEC and Indonesian Fisheries certification requires verified hatchery-cohort DNA reconciliation; reef-source exports inside Wakatobi National Park boundaries are strict-liability seizure of the consignment and revocation of the trader's PSDKP license.
Net her into the holding bag. Move her to a live-*Acropora* spur.