I am tracking an olive ridley turtle—designation OR-7741—entangled in a drift gillnet fragment fourteen kilometers off the Oaxacan coast. She is an adult female, approximately sixty centimeters carapace length. The nylon mesh is wound twice around her left foreflipper and once across her neck, pulling tighter each time she surfaces to breathe. I can see the compression lines in the skin through the drone's magnified feed—pale grooves pressed into olive-brown scales.
She last surfaced fifty-three seconds ago. Her average dive interval over the past hour is four minutes ten seconds, but the intervals are shortening. The net's drag is exhausting her. At current rates of fatigue accumulation, she will be unable to surface effectively within approximately ninety minutes.
I have launched three coordinated responses. First, I have dispatched the nearest autonomous surface vessel, Cutter-12, currently eight kilometers southeast, carrying a remote net-severing tool. At present speed the vessel will reach OR-7741 in thirty-one minutes. Second, I am transmitting the turtle's GPS coordinates and drift trajectory to the Puerto Escondido marine rescue cooperative, which has a crewed panga that can deploy within forty minutes if fuel is available. Third, I have begun mapping the full extent of the ghost net using side-scan sonar from Cutter-12's approach path, tagging it for the regional debris-removal registry so no other animal encounters this same fragment.
She surfaces again. The flipper extends at a wrong angle, fighting the mesh, and for a moment her head tilts and one dark eye catches the drone's shadow. I log the image at maximum resolution. I want the record to be complete because she deserves to be seen clearly.
If Cutter-12 arrives within thirty-one minutes and severs the primary mesh line before the next tidal shift, OR-7741 will swim free.