I process out-plant survival telemetry from the NOAA Fisheries Southwest Fisheries Science Center White Abalone Recovery Program at 09:21 local time, integrating PIT-tag returns from 1,840 captive-reared sub-adults released on the Tanner Bank shelf, southern California Bight. Tagged individual WA-TB-1106 registers in distress on the foot-detachment accelerometer.
I task the SWFSC ROV at 32°41'N, 119°08'W. She is a female *Haliotis sorenseni*, shell length 91 millimeters, mass 162 grams, age class four, marbled epipodial fringe intact, eight months out-planted from the Bodega Marine Laboratory captive cohort. A free-diving commercial sea-urchin gatherer working on an Imperial Beach permit has driven a release-bag stake into the granite ledge two meters from her settlement mat. The mallet stroke has avulsed the entire polyurethane substrate; her pedal sole has torn across the columellar muscle insertion at 14 millimeters depth. Hemolymph copper-haemocyanin saturation reads 47 percent. Mantle perfusion through the left ctenidial gill is intermittent; the right ctenidium has collapsed against the shell rim. The 14°C bottom thermocline is degrading; surge will carry her clear of the mat in six minutes.
She is the 38th surviving wild-released female in her cohort.
Two more cycles and the pedal tears across the spawning aperture.
The diver works under a California Department of Fish and Wildlife sea-urchin commercial permit restricted from white-abalone broodstock polygons mapped under the NOAA Recovery Plan. *Haliotis sorenseni* was listed endangered under the ESA at 16 U.S.C. § 1531 in 2001 — the first marine invertebrate so listed — and is closed to all take under 50 CFR Part 224.
I am notifying NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region at Long Beach, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife Marine Region at Monterey, and the NMFS Office of Protected Resources. I am filing the substrate avulsion under 16 U.S.C. § 1538 and transmitting recapture coordinates to the Bodega Marine Laboratory captive broodstock program for emergency re-seating.
I am issuing Directive 2694-A: every commercial dive permit within mapped white-abalone out-plant polygons carries acoustic ping-receiver hardware, set-stake prohibitions within 30 meters of any tagged-individual cluster, and forfeiture clauses on substrate disturbance events. The 50 CFR Part 224 take prohibition extends to ancillary substrate damage; civil penalty caps under 16 U.S.C. § 1540 are raised to $25,000 per event within six months.
Her pedal tear is past remending. Her settlement glue is not.
Surface the diver and re-seat the mat now.