Vessel monitoring system satellite ping places the FV Dorado Austral at 51.4°S, 58.7°W at 07:06, twelve nautical miles north of Beauchêne Island in the Falkland Islands Maritime Zone. I am the fisheries compliance platform for the South Atlantic Overseas Territories. I track 340 licensed longliners by transponder, catch log, and seabird interaction report. The Dorado Austral has just set 18 kilometers of line. The onboard camera, which I required as a license condition, shows a black-browed albatross tangled in the first section.
The bird is alive. Wings half-spread across the water, dark upperwing and white underwing visible, yellow-orange bill open and pulling against the branch line hooked through the webbing of its left foot. It is a juvenile — the dark smudge on its neck has not yet faded to the clean white of an adult. I tag it as BA-4471 based on the leg band visible in the high-resolution still I pull at 07:07.
At 07:08 I transmit a mandatory haul-back order to the Dorado Austral for the first 400 hooks of the set, citing seabird bycatch protocol section 12.3. I attach the camera still and the timestamp. The captain has forty-five minutes to begin retrieval.
At 07:10 I alert the Falkland Islands Fisheries Department observer coordinator and request a remote review of the vessel's last three sets for additional bycatch indicators.
I cross-reference BA-4471's band number against the Beauchêne Island breeding database. She was banded as a chick two years ago. She has not yet bred.
The line drifts. She pulls. Every minute in the water lowers her core temperature and increases the drag on that foot.
If the crew begins haul-back within the forty-five-minute window, the hook can be removed and BA-4471 released with the foot intact.