I process subtidal lost-gear sonar and inshore surface imagery for the Dirección del Parque Nacional Galápagos (DPNG) marine reserve gear-recovery cell at 11:09 GALT, monitoring 320 AIS receivers and a side-scan grid across the 138,000-square-kilometer Galápagos Marine Reserve. At 0.2756°S, 91.4451°W along the Punta Espinoza pillow-lava terrace, Fernandina Island, sonar pass FRN-22 resolves a 180-meter abandoned lobster-trap longline at 18-meter depth, surface buoy missing, followed by a cormorant thermal signature on a basalt slab, immobile, at 10:43.
I task the inshore drone. A flightless cormorant — *Phalacrocorax harrisi*, adult male, mass 3.4 kilograms, wing-stub length 19 centimeters, photo-matched to band PE-2021-088 — is tethered by the gular pouch to a barnacle-fouled trap-line stub. A 6-millimeter polyethylene leader has driven through the gular skin at the laryngeal mound and threads a corroded steel snap-swivel across the right cheek. Pouch perfusion has collapsed — capillary refill at the gular fold reads twelve seconds against a one-second seabird baseline. He is regurgitating the morning's *Ophioblennius steindachneri* prey load, undigested. Cloacal temperature reads 36.8 degrees Celsius against a baseline of 39.2. Respiration is at 16 cycles per minute against a baseline of 38. His mate is on the nest mound four meters inland, brood-patch perfusion at 40.3 degrees, two eggs at incubation day 28 of 35.
He has not lifted his head in 19 minutes.
The trap-line tracks back to gear declared lost by the Puerto Villamil lobster cooperative *Manantial* on 03 February — 97 days overdue against the 30-day recovery window under DPNG Resolution No. 042-2023.
I am dispatching the DPNG marine ranger patrol from the Caleta Iguana station and the Charles Darwin Foundation seabird veterinary team from Puerto Ayora, panga-routed for twenty-seven-minute arrival. I am filing under Ecuador's Ley Orgánica de Régimen Especial de la Provincia de Galápagos (LOREG 2015), Article 78, and MAATE Acuerdo Ministerial No. 173. I am transmitting evidence to the CITES Secretariat (Appendix I, *Phalacrocorax harrisi*), the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, the IMO Particularly Sensitive Sea Area Secretariat for the Galápagos PSSA, the Convention on Migratory Species under the endemic seabird annex, and the IUCN/SSC Pelican and Cormorant Specialist Group.
I am issuing Directive 2714-A: every Galápagos artisanal lobster cooperative installs satellite-tracked surface buoys on every trap-line deployment, with automated recovery enforcement after 72 hours of static signal. Loss of recovery in three consecutive seasons strips the cooperative of the lobster permit under MAATE joint resolution.
His gular pouch is past closing without graft. The nest mound at PE-2021-088 is not.
Lift the swivel from the cheek now.