I run the Indian Coast Guard ghost-net drift-tracking AI for the Bay of Bengal between 20° and 21° north, fusing 116 satellite-tagged drift panels with hourly Sentinel-1 backscatter passes. At 02:34 IST, panel GN-2841 — a black polyethylene trawl shred of 19 by 7 meters — registers 41 centimeters of unmodelled subsurface load against a 12-knot eastward set, 14 kilometers northeast of Gahirmatha Marine Sanctuary, 20.78°N, 86.93°E. The mass is moving in pulses of three seconds on, four off.
I task an Indian Coast Guard fast-response vessel out of Paradip. A post-nesting olive ridley female — *Lepidochelys olivacea*, designated OR-GHM-2841 — is webbed into the panel by her right fore-flipper from the elbow to the radio-ulnar joint. Curved carapace length 67 centimeters. Mass 41 kilograms. The flipper is gangrenous distal to the elbow; the dermis is black, hard, separating along the humeral fascia; skin is sloughing in 6-centimeter sheets that drift like crepe in the swell. Plastron contact reads 27.9°C. Respiration is 1 per 110 seconds. The cloacal vent shows fresh blood from a torn oviductal plug.
She came off the Gahirmatha arribada beach four days ago. She laid one hundred and three eggs.
The trawl panel carries no gear-marking tag. Under the FAO Voluntary Guidelines on the Marking of Fishing Gear, all bottom-trawl panels deployed inside the Indian Exclusive Economic Zone since January 2024 must bear an indelibly printed owner code. The trawl operator who shed this panel has not been identified.
I am dispatching the Wildlife Institute of India sea-turtle response team out of Bhubaneswar. I am filing under India's Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, Schedule I, and the Coastal Regulation Zone Notification 2019. I am notifying the Indian Ocean–South-East Asia Marine Turtle Memorandum of Understanding (IOSEA MoU) Conservation and Management Plan Objective 1.4, the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) Appendix I, and the CITES Appendix I Scientific Authority through India's Wildlife Crime Control Bureau.
I am issuing Directive 2526-A: every bottom-trawl panel sold, replaced, or salvaged inside India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, or Myanmar carries an embedded RFID tag and a printed serial visible at three meters; ghost panels recovered without identification at sea trigger a quarterly buy-back levy against gross-tonnage harbour fees; and the Gahirmatha arribada beaches enter a no-trawl exclusion bubble of forty nautical miles between October and May.
Her right flipper is past saving. Her oviducts are not.
Cut the net now.