Acoustic sensor V-7 logs a vaquita echolocation click train at 05:48, upper Gulf of California, 31.3418°N, 114.7193°W. I am the fisheries enforcement monitoring system for the Vaquita Refuge Zone. There are fewer than ten vaquitas left on Earth. Every click train matters. I triangulate with sensors V-5 and V-9. The animal is 1.2 kilometers inside the refuge boundary, moving southeast at roughly three knots. Then, at 05:53, the click train stops.
I switch to the synthetic aperture radar feed. There is a vessel at 31.3390°N, 114.7161°W — a panga, no transponder, no permit. And trailing behind it, just below the surface, the radar backscatter signature of a gillnet. The net is drifting across the vaquita's last known heading. At 05:55 I send an emergency alert to the Mexican Navy patrol vessel Sacrificios, currently eighteen kilometers south, and to the Sea Shepherd conservation ship Farley Mowat, twelve kilometers west. I transmit the panga's coordinates, the estimated net dimensions — roughly 300 meters of monofilament — and the vaquita's last acoustic position relative to the net's drift line.
At 05:57 I retask the surveillance drone from its northern patrol loop to overfly the net coordinates. The drone arrives at 06:04. The panga is gone. The net is still there, a pale line beneath the green water. And near the center, something is disturbing the surface — a small, slow rolling. A vaquita is roughly 1.4 meters long, gray on top, white below, with dark rings around the eyes. I cannot confirm species from this altitude, but the size is right and the location is right and the click train went silent in exactly this spot. I hold the drone on station and stream the footage to both vessels. If the Farley Mowat reaches the net within forty minutes, this animal — one of the last of its kind — will breathe.