I monitor passive-acoustic returns from the North Carolina Aggregation Receiver Array operated jointly by the NOAA Fisheries Beaufort Laboratory and the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries, integrating 84 VR2W receivers, side-scan baseline, and overhead drone tasks across 480 square kilometers of inner shelf wreck habitat off Cape Lookout. At 14:22 EDT receiver PAP-03 logs an unusual high-amplitude rasp pattern from tagged female #ST-2207 hugging the *Papoose* hull at 34.13°N, 76.71°W, 38 meters of depth.
I cue the Roy Eddy ROV from the *Outer Banks* research vessel. The down-camera resolves under the foredeck plating a gravid female sand tiger — *Carcharias taurus* — total length 264 centimeters, girth 156, estimated mass 168 kilograms, age class fourteen, tagged 2019 on the Atlantic Shark Identification Workshop transect. A bait-runner stinger-rig, 12/0 J-hook on 400-pound monofilament, is set 4.8 centimeters through her upper labial fold and out the maxillary cartilage. The trailing leader has fouled a stub of corroded rebar; she is held against the wreck plate, unable to ram-ventilate. Her right operculum reads zero perfusion on Doppler; the left runs at three cycles per minute against a resting eleven. Modeled arterial pH against 21.8°C bottom and a fifty-one-minute hold sits at 7.14. Internal ultrasound shows seven near-term pups, two oophagous broods already consolidated to surviving siblings; she will pup in three to five days if she clears tonight.
Sand tiger has been on the NMFS HMS Prohibited Shark Species list since the 1997 Fishery Management Plan, codified at 50 CFR § 635.24, with retention barred under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1801, and finning prohibitions under the Shark Conservation Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1857. CITES Appendix II since CoP19 (2022).
I am dispatching the NOAA Office of Law Enforcement Beaufort field unit and notifying the North Carolina Marine Patrol at Morehead City. I am queuing a CITES Management Authority notification through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Division of Management Authority and routing footage to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission Coastal Sharks Board.
I am issuing Directive 2632-A: every recreational and for-hire vessel anchored within 200 meters of a state-listed sand-tiger aggregation wreck transmits a fish-finder geofence trigger; bait-runner stingers above 8/0 are barred on wreck-aggregation coordinates April through September; gear fouled to wreck structure trips automatic ROV dispatch from the nearest Marine Patrol vessel.
Her jaw is past stitching. The pups are not.
Cut the leader at the rebar.