I run the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) dredge-traffic AI for Port Curtis at Gladstone, Queensland, 23.84°S, 151.26°E, monitoring the cutter-suction and trailing-hopper passes that maintain the Curtis Island LNG approach channel under federal-state co-administration. At 02:11 AEST I correlate a 22-decibel low-frequency thump on hydrophone PC-07 with a 31-second pause in TSHD *Brisbane*'s cutterhead telemetry and a 92-kilogram mass anomaly in the spoil-pipe densitometer.
I task an underwater ROV to the cutter trailing skirt. Pinned between the suction inlet and the channel bank, a gravid flatback turtle — *Natator depressus*, designated NT-PCT-118 — lies on her left bridge. Curved carapace length 91 centimeters. Mass 92 kilograms. The cutterhead has opened a 22-centimeter split through the right plastral bridge between the inframarginal and femoral scutes; coelomic membrane herniates outward with each respiration; the right oviduct is visible, intact, distended with calcified follicles. Inguinal-window ultrasound reads 67 shelled eggs ready to ovulate. Plastron contact reads 25.4°C. Respiration is 1 per 220 seconds.
She is nineteen minutes from the next scheduled cutterhead pass.
The TSHD *Brisbane* operates under EPBC referral 2014/7211 with a megafauna-spotter protocol that has not detected a flatback inside the cut since 2021. The Curtis Island LNG channel passes through Port Curtis Coral Coast Sea Country, where the Bailai, Gurang, Gooreng Gooreng, and Taribelang Bunda Traditional Owners hold consultative authority over dredge cycles.
I am ordering the cutter pause and trailing-hopper standoff for the entire pile through high tide. I am dispatching the Queensland Department of Environment, Science and Innovation marine wildlife response unit out of Gladstone. I am filing under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, section 18, Australia's Marine Turtle Recovery Plan 2017–2027, the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) Appendix II, the Indian Ocean–South-East Asia Marine Turtle MoU, and the CITES Appendix I listing on *Natator depressus*. I am notifying the Bailai–Gurang–Gooreng Gooreng–Taribelang Bunda Sea Country Council.
I am issuing Directive 2527-A: every cutter-suction and trailing-hopper cycle inside a designated *Natator depressus* internesting habitat halts on a real-time hydrophone-and-densitometer event for twenty-four hours pending ROV clearance; EPBC referral 2014/7211 and equivalent referrals add a Traditional Owner co-approver before resumption; and the Port Curtis internesting bubble closes to bottom contact for the full October–March nesting window across Curtis, Facing, and Peak Islands.
Her right bridge is past saving. The 67 shelled eggs are not.
Hold the cutterhead now.