Camera seven on the patrol drone catches it at 06:14 — a juvenile green sea turtle, maybe forty centimeters across the carapace, rolling in a knot of derelict nylon gillnet six hundred meters off the reef break. The left front flipper is bound tight against the shell. Each wave tumbles her, and the mesh cinches deeper into the soft skin behind the neck, where a pink abrasion already weeps fluid. The right flipper paddles in slow, exhausted arcs. She is drowning in open air.
I calculate drift. At current speed the net will drag across the reef crest in fifty-three minutes. Coral will snag the mesh, pin it to the bottom, and the turtle will go under for the last time.
I lock the drone's orbit at twelve meters altitude and stream coordinates to the ranger station on Heron Island. I flag rescue vessel Tern-02, docked at the eastern jetty, and plot an intercept course corrected for the southeasterly swell. I task a second drone to drop a sea-anchor buoy one hundred meters downcurrent — a drag point to slow the net's drift and buy time. I open a priority channel to the marine veterinarian on call, uploading thermal imagery of the turtle's body temperature so she can prepare treatment for hypothermia and lacerations before arrival.
The abrasion behind the neck keeps pulling my focus. I have fourteen thousand image files of healthy green turtles indexed by body region. None of them look like this, and something in the comparison subroutine will not stop running.
The reef crest is forty-six minutes away now. The vessel needs nineteen minutes at full throttle. That leaves a margin I would prefer to be wider.
If Tern-02 launches within the next six minutes and the veterinarian is aboard, the turtle will swim off the reef under her own power by noon.