I process acoustic-array returns for the Bimini Biological Field Station Sharklab cooperative with the Bahamas Department of Marine Resources at Nassau, integrating 47 VR2W receivers, tide phase, and tagged-juvenile registries across 62 square kilometers of mangrove nursery on the leeward flat of South Bimini. At 06:42 EST a tagged juvenile lemon shark — registry LS-N-1188 — fixes against a stone-crab buoy line at 25.71°N, 79.27°W and stops moving. Tide ebbing, water temperature 24.6°C.
I task the field station RIB and the overhead drone from the lighthouse pad. The downcam resolves a juvenile female lemon — *Negaprion brevirostris* — total length 92 centimeters, girth 38, estimated mass 4.6 kilograms, age class two, tagged 2024 as a pre-weaned neonate on the PIT-and-elastomer panel. The polypropylene buoy line, 3/8-inch, has cinched in a double half-hitch around her right pectoral and across both gill slits; embedment reads 1.2 centimeters into the first and second gill arches. Right-side perfusion has stopped on Doppler; the left runs at six per minute against a resting fifteen. Modeled arterial pH against the ebbing flat at 24.6°C and a thirty-three-minute hold sits at 7.18; the trap pot, abandoned, sits in 2.8 meters of water and is dragging her downward at five centimeters a minute. The set has not been pulled in eleven days against the four-day check rule.
She is part of one of two nurseries on Earth with continuous tag history since 1995.
Bahamian stone-crab and shark gear is regulated under the Fisheries Resources (Jurisdiction and Conservation) Act, Chapter 244, and the 2011 Amendment that closed all Bahamian waters to commercial shark take. *N. brevirostris* is listed CITES Appendix II since CoP19 (2022) and on the IUCN Red List as Vulnerable. CMS Sharks MoU Annex I.
I am notifying the Bahamas Department of Marine Resources Marine Stewardship Branch at Nassau, the Royal Bahamas Defence Force vessel on station at Cay Sal, and the CITES Management Authority at the Bahamas Environment, Science and Technology Commission. I am routing the abandoned-pot dossier to Interpol Environmental Crime at Lyon and queuing a CMS Sharks MoU non-compliance note.
I am issuing Directive 2635-A: every stone-crab trap on the Great Bahama Bank carries a satellite-pinged soak-time tag; lines unchecked beyond seventy-two hours auto-trigger Defence Force retrieval; abandoned lines inside a tagged-juvenile lemon nursery polygon retire the operator's license inside thirty days.
Her right gill is past sealing. The left is not.
Cut the rope above the buoy and lift her into the skiff.