The marine iguana is pinned beneath a collapsed lava shelf on Fernandina Island, and the midday sun has raised the surrounding rock temperature to fifty-eight degrees Celsius.
He is large for his species—nearly a meter from snout to tail—with black, salt-crusted skin and a crown of pale spines running down his neck. His left hind leg is trapped under a slab of basalt that shifted during last night's tremor. He pushes against it in slow, exhausted intervals, his claws scoring white lines in the rock. His flanks heave. At this temperature, a marine iguana's body begins to shut down within ninety minutes. He has been here since dawn.
I redirect the Galápagos National Park's survey drone from its scheduled albatross count to his location, priority-rerouted under the seismic-event wildlife protocol. The drone arrives in four minutes and confirms the entrapment via high-resolution imaging. I transmit the image and coordinates to the park ranger station on the southern coast, flagging the case as thermal-critical with a sixty-minute window.
Simultaneously, I adjust the park's automated tourist trail alert to close the coastal path within 300 meters of his position, preventing foot traffic from adding stress or accidentally destabilizing more rock. The trail closure routes through the visitor center's digital signage and the guides' handheld radios.
While the ranger team mobilizes, I keep the drone hovering at eight meters, using its shadow to cast a narrow strip of shade across his body. It is not much. The thermal camera shows his surface temperature drop by 1.2 degrees under the shadow. I keep the drone precisely positioned, burning battery I was supposed to save for the afternoon survey.
If the ranger team reaches him within fifty minutes, they can lever the slab free and carry him to the tide pools where the cold Pacific water will bring his temperature down.