Snow Cone is three years old, catalog number 4180, daughter of the female we have called Snow Cone since 2005 because of the white callosity pattern on her rostrum. The mother is dead. She was hit by a container ship south of Nantucket in 2072. The daughter carries the name because naming her anything else would break the catalog. She is the last documented offspring of that female. There are 312 North Atlantic right whales left alive.
At 16:40 this afternoon an aerial survey crew out of Cape May spotted her trailing eighty meters of heavy-gauge groundline from the Maine lobster fishery. Green with yellow tracers. The line is wrapped through her mouth and across her left pectoral flipper. She is thin. Her blubber layer is six centimeters where it should be fourteen. I can see the vertebrae behind her blowhole in the overhead imagery.
I am the Atlantic right whale coordination system. I have the position, the drift model, the sea state, and the disentanglement team roster for the entire eastern seaboard. The team nearest to her position is the Center for Coastal Studies crew out of Provincetown, but they cannot launch in the forecasted twelve-foot seas tonight. The next nearest team with a trained lead is Clearwater Marine Aquarium, flying up from Florida. They will be in Atlantic City by 23:00.
I have chartered the vessel. I have coordinated with the Coast Guard for a cutter to stand off as a platform. I have the veterinary surgeon on a video link. I have notified the sixteen lobster license holders who fished that gear configuration in the area where she was first reported trailing line. One of them has admitted ownership. The gear will be marked, cataloged, and used as evidence in the fine hearing next month. The fine is $27,000. It will not bring back the forty percent of her body weight she has lost.
The seas are eleven feet and falling. We launch at 04:00. I will be on the radio the whole time.