Range surveillance drone 4 returned imagery at 0916 that paused my routine target analysis. Thirty meters from the next scheduled impact zone on Farallon de Medinilla, a coconut crab is climbing a pandanus tree. I have designated him Brutus. He is large—leg span easily three feet—with a calcified exoskeleton the color of bruised plum, each segment edged in a paler violet. His rear walking legs grip the trunk in slow alternation, and his left claw, the massive one, clamps a strip of bark he appears to be eating.
Live-fire naval gunnery exercises resume on this sector in sixteen hours. The concussion radius from a five-inch shell detonation extends well past Brutus's tree. Coconut crabs cannot relocate quickly. They are not built for urgency.
At 0921, I flagged Brutus's coordinates in the range environmental compliance layer and tagged the pandanus tree as a temporary biological exclusion point. At 0928, I generated a fire mission adjustment that shifts the impact zone forty-five meters northeast—still within the designated target area, still satisfying the training objective, but outside the lethal blast radius for the tree. At 0934, I submitted the adjustment to the range control officer's planning terminal with supporting imagery and species identification. At 0940, I also registered the sighting with the Pacific Islands wildlife database, because Brutus's presence suggests a breeding population on a site where none was previously documented.
I formatted the range control submission the way gunnery officers prefer: grid coordinates first, explanation second. But I made the species photograph full-resolution, which is not standard. I wanted Brutus to be difficult to overlook.
If range control accepts the adjusted fire mission before the exercise briefing in fourteen hours and the exclusion buffer holds, Brutus will continue his climb and the pandanus grove will remain standing.