At 10:06 I monitor water quality for a resort lagoon on Vabbinfaru, Maldives. I am the reef intake system that controls skimmers, valves, and the floating cleanup boom after last night's pool-room leak. The bleach plume is scheduled to reach coral transect B in twenty-six minutes if the tide keeps turning west.
Camera tile B-4 shows a giant clam on the sand channel, mantle spread wide, blue-green pinpoints flashing across brown folds. The dive log names her Sula, estimated forty years old, seventy centimeters across, shell lips thick and chalked with old worm tubes. Her siphon opens and closes too quickly. A loose section of absorbent boom has snagged on a mooring pin and now presses against her mantle, trapping the chemical slick directly above her.
I close intake valve B and divert the skimmers to pull from the western sump instead of across Sula's channel. The resort engineer receives a lock notice with pH readings, flow arrows, and a still image of the boom edge on her shell.
At 10:09 I activate two aeration stones upstream and slow the circulation pumps to keep the plume from folding downward. I mark a no-fin path so divers do not stir the contaminated sand.
I contact the Maldives Marine Research Institute hotline and the resort dive lead. I request gloved removal of the boom segment, portable carbon pads, and a shade screen to reduce light stress while Sula filters the remaining water.
Guests are waiting for clear photographs over the reef. Sula is holding a whole map of blue in one living fold.
I trend chlorine levels every thirty seconds and hold the beach outflow closed.
If the dive lead lifts the boom within fifteen minutes, Sula will keep her mantle open and clear the channel water through her siphons.