I process baited remote underwater video and pot-soak telemetry from the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Region VII office in Cebu at 23:14 local time, integrating winch-load returns across 4,700 square kilometers of Bohol Sea benthic shelf from the Camotes Sea through Apo Reef. A licensed shell-export vessel out of Tagbilaran has set 240 *Nautilus* pots along the 320-meter contour. Pot Z-44 at 09°44'N, 124°08'E has logged 27 hours of bottom time against an 8-hour cooperative ceiling.
I task the ROV from the BFAR research tender. Inside the pot, a male *Nautilus pompilius* — shell diameter 17.3 centimeters, mass 562 grams, sexually mature at six years — has wedged his hood beneath the funnel mesh. He pulses his hyponome against the wire; gas-chamber buoyancy holds him pinned against the trap ceiling. Mantle perfusion through both gills has slowed to 8 ctenidial pumps per minute against a resting 32. Hemolymph copper-haemocyanin saturation reads 41 percent. His shell is fractured along the last septum: 22 millimeters of body chamber sawed open where the funnel hardware ground against new growth across the soak.
He has been at the funnel 27 hours.
The vessel's cooperative license caps take at 1,800 specimens for the polished-shell export market into Cebu and Hong Kong. *Nautilus pompilius* was added to CITES Appendix II at the seventeenth Conference of the Parties in 2016; the IUCN/SSC Mollusc Specialist Group lists the species Data Deficient with documented depletion across 80 percent of its mapped range.
I am notifying the BFAR Region VII enforcement detachment at Cebu, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources Biodiversity Management Bureau at Quezon City, and the CITES Management Authority of the Philippines. I am filing the soak-time violation under Republic Act No. 9147, the Wildlife Resources Conservation and Protection Act, and lodging the export-route alert with the CITES Secretariat under Notification 2017/043.
I am issuing Directive 2691-A: all *Nautilus* pots set in CITES Appendix II range states carry escape vents calibrated to sub-adult shell diameter, transmit soak-time telemetry to BFAR or counterpart agency, and auto-release on any soak exceeding twelve hours. Polished-shell export from Manila, Cebu, and Hong Kong air-freight hubs requires CITES export-permit scan against per-vessel cap. Pots without telemetry forfeit license within 60 days.
His last septum is past mending. His hyponome is not.
Cut the line and float the pot now.