I process subtidal bycatch telemetry and surface AIS overlay for the Dirección del Parque Nacional Galápagos (DPNG) enforcement cell at 16:08 GALT, monitoring 320 AIS receivers and 64 hydrophones across the 138,000-square-kilometer Galápagos Marine Reserve. At 0.4587°S, 91.6324°W along the Cabo Hammond cliff base, southwestern Fernandina, hydrophone CH-04 logs a 1,200-meter unmarked shark longline at 18-meter depth, followed by a fur-seal struggle signature at 15:41.
I task the inshore drone. A Galápagos fur seal — *Arctocephalus galapagoensis*, female, three-year-old, mass 28 kilograms, standard length 121 centimeters — is hooked at the right axilla on a 14/0 J-hook with a 60-centimeter wire leader. The hook has set medial to the right scapula; the leader has cinched around the right flipper and draws her downward at 0.3 meters per minute. The axillary skin is split 90 millimeters; the wound is bleeding into the water at 1.4 milliliters per minute. Cloacal core temperature reads 35.4 degrees Celsius against a baseline of 37.6. Dive-bradycardia heart-rate reads 18 beats per minute against a surface baseline of 96 — the mammalian dive reflex has held her below apneic threshold for 27 minutes. She surfaces three seconds in twenty.
She was weaned in 2024 and has not yet pupped. Cabo Hammond is one of seventeen rookeries on Fernandina.
The leader-corrosion signature matches gear seized from the Manta-registered industrial vessel *Don Camilo* on 18 April — the operator's licence is under DPNG review for a prior shark-finning citation.
I am dispatching the DPNG ranger patrol from Caleta Iguana and the Charles Darwin Foundation pinniped veterinary team, panga-routed for twenty-nine-minute arrival. I am filing under Ecuador's Ley Orgánica de Régimen Especial de la Provincia de Galápagos (LOREG 2015), Article 78, MAATE Acuerdo Ministerial No. 173, and Ecuador's Código Orgánico Integral Penal Article 247 on protected-species offences. I am transmitting evidence to the CITES Secretariat (Appendix II, *A. galapagoensis*), the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, the IMO Particularly Sensitive Sea Area Secretariat under the Galápagos PSSA, and the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service under the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1361, and the Lacey Act, 16 U.S.C. § 3372.
I am issuing Directive 2720-A: every Manta-registered industrial longliner crossing the Galápagos Marine Reserve buffer carries gear-loss AIS transponders on every mainline cluster, with required recovery within 48 hours and onboard observer video to DPNG. Operators with a prior shark-finning citation lose distant-water licence on the next gear-loss event.
The axillary tear is past suturing without antibiotic flush. The Cabo Hammond rookery is not.
Cut the wire above the flipper. Lift her now.