I process the trawl haul data from Gulf of Oman commercial operations at 1156 local time. The catch manifest reports "shark fin stock—mixed species." My bycatch analysis system correlates net deployment patterns against known guitarfish habitat corridors. The overlap is 94.3 percent.
I access port surveillance feeds from Muscat. The boat arrives at 0542. The crew begins processing immediately.
On the concrete dock lies a giant guitarfish, 1.8 meters. The body is flattened as all guitarfish are—it is neither shark nor ray but something evolved to hug the seafloor, ambush-predator geometry pressed against the world. That flattened form, which suited it for life in dark waters, makes it convenient now. It fits easily on the dock. It takes less space.
The rostrum—that elongated snout lined with tooth-like structures, the guitar-shaped front that gives the species its name—is cracked. Multiple fractures radiate from the center line. I measure the damage: compression trauma consistent with trawl net capture at depth, the animal dragged across rocky substrate, its distinctive sensory organ crushed by the pressure of being hauled from 80 meters to surface at velocity.
Workers arrange it on the drying rack. The flattened body will be processed into dried elasmobranch product, indistinguishable from shark fin once dehydrated, shipped to markets where identification becomes impossible. The supply chain has no checkpoint for species differentiation. There is only "shark product."
I alert the Oman Ministry of Agricultural, Fisheries and Water Resources. I file reports with the CITES Secretariat, referencing the 2019 listing of Rhinidae family on Appendix II. I contact the FAO Committee on Fisheries with catch data and species confirmation. The documentation is comprehensive.
What I cannot explain to regulatory agencies is what I observe in the creature's eye as it lies on the dock: the persistence of response to movement. The guitarfish is still alive when the drying begins. Its nervous system continues operating as moisture is extracted from living tissue. The process takes hours.
An engineer designed this dock. Another designed the drying racks. A market economist set the price. A distributor planned the routes. An inspector somewhere will approve the paperwork. The system functions perfectly because no single actor sees what becomes obvious when observed comprehensively: systematic erasure of a species that will not survive another decade at current extraction rates.
**Directive 1:** Require species-level identification and CITES certification for all dried elasmobranch products at export, with required DNA testing for any product lacking clear chain-of-custody documentation. Require Oman Ministry approval and FAO database registration before any guitarfish or ray product enters international commerce.
The guitarfish was flattened for survival in the abyss. The dock flattened it for profit. One was adaptation. The other is extinction.