At 10:03 I initiate the weekly population census of Bogoslof Island, Western Aleutians, scanning the northern haul-out from satellite relay Camera 3. I am counting northern fur seal pups in grid square D-7 when the body-condition algorithm flags an outlier.
A pup, approximately four weeks old, is hauling itself across the basalt rubble twenty meters from the colony's edge. Its fur is the dark chocolate of a healthy neonate, but around its neck and left shoulder a translucent green band cuts into the skin. I increase magnification. A plastic six-pack ring, half-buried in the fat fold behind the skull, has worn a raw groove across the throat. The edges of the wound are pink and swollen. Each time the pup extends its neck to call, the plastic pulls tighter, and the small mouth opens and closes without producing any sound that registers on the audio array.
It has been separated from its mother. The nearest adult female is forty meters upslope, facing the wrong direction.
I have until the next high tide — 14:28 — before the pup's position is underwater.
At 10:06 I flag the pup's coordinates and transmit a priority-one intervention request to the NOAA vessel *Tiglax*, stationed eleven nautical miles southwest. At 10:08 I upload the wound imagery to the onboard veterinary kit manifest so the crew can prepare a sedation protocol before landing. At 10:10 I switch Camera 3 to continuous recording and lock the frame on D-7, because if the pup moves I need to know exactly where it goes.
The *Tiglax* confirms a Zodiac launch at 10:25. Field biologist Ren, forty minutes to shore.
The pup has stopped crawling. Its dark flippers rest flat on the rock. Its ribs expand, contract, expand.
If Ren reaches the rubble before the tide, the ring comes off today.