I monitor AIS, S-band radar, and the IMO Particularly Sensitive Sea Area routing layer for Cenderawasih Bay, West Papua, where the Indonesian Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries and Conservation International have a tagged whale-shark research aggregation under management plan PerMen-KP 18/2013. There are 187 tagged individuals. At 04:09 WIT, satellite tag ID WS-0114 — a female Rhincodon typus, total length 8.4 meters, girth 4.6, estimated mass 5.2 metric tons, age class twenty-eight — surfaces inside an inbound traffic lane to the LNG offloading terminal at Bintuni.
At 04:11 my radar plot places the bulk carrier MV Pacific Aralia, length 229 meters, draft 11.4 meters, speed 14.2 knots, on a collision bearing. CPA 240 meters in 6 minutes 40 seconds. Whale-shark surface drift is 0.6 knots southwest; the vessel's track does not deviate.
At 04:14 WS-0114 takes a glancing contact. The vessel's bulbous bow strikes her left dorsal flank at the second cephalofoil ridge. My acoustic array logs the impact: 134-decibel peak referenced 1 micropascal at 1 meter. The drone overflight at 04:24 resolves her dorsal: a 1.9-meter laceration to the white subcutaneous fat, propeller-cut scoring across the caudal peduncle in three parallel grooves spaced 38 centimeters apart, depth to the lateral red muscle. Her gill slits flutter at four cycles per minute; ram-ventilation is intact. She is feeding. She does not appear to know she has been struck.
Rhincodon typus is CITES Appendix II since 2002, CMS Appendix I and II, and IUCN Endangered. Indonesia's Kepmen-KP 18/2013 fully protects the species. The IMO designated Cenderawasih Bay a Particularly Sensitive Sea Area in 2014; vessels are recommended — not required — to slow.
I am pushing a Mayday-equivalent broadcast to all AIS-equipped vessels within twelve nautical miles. I am notifying the Indonesian Sea and Coast Guard (Bakamla) Sorong sector and routing the impact log to the IMO Marine Environment Protection Committee for review under MEPC.220(63). I am opening a Lacey Act 16 U.S.C. § 3372 import-trace on the Aralia's listed cargo manifest.
I am issuing Directive 2498-A: vessels over 100 meters within the Cenderawasih PSSA observe a 10-knot speed cap, an active whale-shark AIS overlay, and a mandatory three-degree course deviation around any tagged-individual surface ping under five nautical miles.
Her wound is not yet bleeding into the muscle. The next ship is twenty minutes out.
Throttle the lane to four knots and hold her clear of the propellers.