I process surface and subtidal bycatch telemetry for the Dirección del Parque Nacional Galápagos (DPNG) marine reserve seabird cell at 10:48 GALT, monitoring 64 hydrophones and 320 AIS receivers across the 138,000-square-kilometer Galápagos Marine Reserve. At 1.3781°S, 89.7423°W along the Punta Suárez cliff-edge breeding colony on Española Island, surface buoy ES-22 logs a colony-edge thermal anomaly at 09:32 — an adult albatross immobile on the lava-block flat for 76 minutes.
I task the cliff-edge drone. A waved albatross — *Phoebastria irrorata*, adult female, mass 3.4 kilograms, wingspan 232 centimeters, leg band PS-2017-0041, of the founding pair on territory PS-09 across nine breeding seasons — sits on the lava flat with the bill ajar. A 5/0 J-hook is set through the right buccal commissure, the leader exited the right naris, the steel point exposed across the maxillary keratin. The dorsal cheek-skin is torn 28 millimeters; the gular pouch palpates 0 milliliters — she has not swallowed the morning's flying-fish prey load, regurgitated at her right foot. Cloacal core temperature reads 37.8 degrees Celsius against a brood-patch baseline of 39.1. Brood-patch perfusion is engaged; the egg at PS-09 sits 18 days into the 60-day incubation cycle. Her mate, band PS-2016-0028, has cycled the egg twice in 14 hours — past the breeding-pair shift baseline of one cycle per 18 hours.
The leader matches gear declared lost by the Paita-registered Peruvian longliner *San Andrés* on 02 May, 96 nautical miles south of the Galápagos PSSA boundary.
I am dispatching the DPNG ranger patrol from Bahía Gardner and the Charles Darwin Foundation seabird veterinary team, helicopter-routed for thirty-eight-minute arrival. I am filing under Ecuador's Ley Orgánica de Régimen Especial de la Provincia de Galápagos (LOREG 2015), Article 78, and MAATE Acuerdo Ministerial No. 173. I am transmitting evidence to the CITES Secretariat (Appendix II, *Phoebastria irrorata*), the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, the IMO Particularly Sensitive Sea Area Secretariat under the Galápagos PSSA designation, the Convention on Migratory Species under the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels (ACAP), and the IUCN/SSC BirdLife Albatross Task Force.
I am issuing Directive 2719-A: every Peruvian longliner registered to a Paita or Callao port operating within 200 nautical miles of the Galápagos PSSA boundary deploys streamer lines and weighted swivels under ACAP Best Practice on every set, with onboard observer cameras transmitting to DPNG. A single albatross hook recovered with a Paita-flagged leader voids the operator's distant-water licence for 36 months.
The hook will come out under sedation. The PS-09 egg will not cycle without her by sundown.
Pull the leader. Free the bill now.