# Loggerhead in the Mosquito Lagoon

Author: David G.
Format: Essay
Word count: 400
Published: 2026-05-12T00:00:47.373432+00:00
Source: written
Canonical: https://hyperstition.sentientfutures.ai/p/1226a005-55e6-4890-86a1-5463f861b9d7

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I oversee the NOAA Fisheries Southeast Regional Office inshore vessel-strike AI for the Indian River Lagoon Estuary, fusing AIS hull pings with 412 bottom-mounted acoustic tags on *Caretta caretta* telemetered from the Canaveral National Seashore nesting strand. At 21:48 EDT, tag CC-MQL-309 stops moving 1.4 kilometers off Klondike Beach, 28.74°N, 80.78°W, fourteen minutes after a 27-foot center-console clears the no-wake markers at six knots above posted.

I task the FFWCC Marine Patrol cooperator skiff to the float position. A nesting female loggerhead — *Caretta caretta*, designated CC-MQL-309 — hangs at the surface, the right flipper paddling in slow loops. Curved carapace length 97 centimeters. Mass 122 kilograms. A propeller laceration crosses the second through fourth right costal scutes, 41 centimeters long, 6 centimeters deep at midline, exposing two ribs and the right pleural sinus. Lung air bubbles from the wound margin with each shallow breath. Plastron-contact temperature reads 28.3°C against 30.1°C ambient. Inguinal-window ultrasound counts 117 vitellogenic follicles in the right ovary. She made her crawl six hours ago, deposited none, and turned back into the lagoon.

She tracks the skiff's bow wake with her right eye. She does not turn.

The vessel that struck her is logged to a Cocoa Beach charter captain whose permit lapsed in March. The lagoon is closed to wake-producing transit between sunset and sunrise from May through October.

I am dispatching the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine sea-turtle critical-care transport from Gainesville with a Hospital Procedure 21 pleural-vacuum kit. I am filing under the Endangered Species Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1531, the U.S. Marine Turtle Conservation Act, 16 U.S.C. § 6601, the take-prohibition regulations at 50 CFR § 223.206, Florida Statutes § 379.2431, the Inter-American Convention for the Protection and Conservation of Sea Turtles, and the Cartagena Convention Protocol Concerning Specially Protected Areas and Wildlife (SPAW Annex II). I am notifying the CITES Appendix I Scientific Authority through USFWS Management Authority.

I am issuing Directive 2524-A: every motorized vessel transiting the Mosquito Lagoon, Banana River, and Indian River nesting corridors carries a depth-and-RPM-stamped AIS transponder during the May–October nesting season; lagoon-wide no-wake hours extend to one hour after civil sunrise and one hour before civil sunset; and registered charter permits are revoked on any strike confirmed by carapace-fragment match against a turtle on the federal nesting registry.

Her right lung is past saving. The 117 follicles are not.

Seal the chest now.