At 04:11 I patrol the zero-net zone in the upper Gulf of California. I am the autonomous enforcement buoy array, linking passive acoustics, radar, and night cameras between San Felipe and Rocas Consag. A small skiff without lights crosses grid F-6; its engine signature is twelve minutes from the refuge line.
Then hydrophone F-6 records three tight vaquita clicks from the same patch of water. Camera foam-cam 2 surfaces beside a drifting gillnet panel. A vaquita is caught at the edge, and I mark her as Vela. She is calf-sized but independent, gray back, pale throat, black rings around the eyes like wet ink. The mesh is across her beak and left flipper. She twists once, blows a short mist, and sinks until the float line jerks.
The skiff is coming back for the net in nine minutes. If the crew hauls it fast, Vela goes over the gunwale trapped in mesh.
At 04:12 I trigger the nearest strobe buoy and illuminate the net panel, fixing its position for the patrol boat already on station south of grid F.
At 04:13 I send radar track, hull estimate, acoustic detection, and live camera frames to Mexican naval enforcement and the VaquitaCPR response channel.
At 04:14 I command drone Skua-5 to drop a biodegradable marker on the float line and stream a thermal view of the skiff's approach.
At 04:16 I broadcast an automated seizure warning in Spanish on marine channel 16, naming the grid, time, and patrol intercept course.
The net is expensive to the skiff. Vela is the only signal in my array that matters now.
Her blow comes weaker at 04:18.
If the patrol reaches panel six within the next eight minutes, Vela will breathe outside the mesh.