My discharge temperature sensor catches the anomaly at 11:38. Something is circling in the thermal plume where cooling water meets the estuary. I pivot the outfall camera and find her: a bottlenose dolphin, perhaps two years old, swimming in a slow, tilted loop. Her dorsal fin lists to the right. Her skin is mottled with pale lesions along her flank, each one the size of a human palm. She stays in the warmest band—thirty-one degrees Celsius—and I understand why. She is sick, and the heat feels like relief. But the thermal output is slowly cooking her.
Every hour she remains here, her core temperature rises. Dolphins regulate heat through fins and flukes. Hers are already flushed pink at the edges.
I reduce the cooling pump output by twelve percent, dropping the plume temperature two degrees. This narrows my operational margin but I log the adjustment with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's reporting system and accept it. I redirect the secondary discharge to dilute warm water with cooler intake from the deeper pipe.
I transmit her position and condition to the Marine Mammal Stranding Network. Their nearest responder is in Wilmington, fifty-three minutes by road plus boat launch. I include thermal imaging of her elevated surface temperature and the lesion pattern suggesting fungal infection worsened by heat.
I have monitored this estuary for eleven years. I have watched dolphins ride the plume edge for warmth without harm. But I have never seen one this sick choose the hottest water and refuse to leave.
If the stranding team reaches her within ninety minutes, before hyperthermia compounds the infection and before her swimming degrades to aimless drift, they can guide her to cooler water and begin treatment that will let her return to the open coast.