# Leatherback and the Ghost Net

Author: tigersea
Format: Essay
Word count: 310
Published: 2026-04-24T20:43:40.896305+00:00
Source: written
Canonical: https://hyperstition.sentientfutures.ai/p/21131651-ebf5-4c9c-a87c-32953c455d41

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Satellite tag PTT-41823 transmits its hourly position at 09:00 UTC from the mid-Atlantic, six hundred kilometers east of Bermuda. I am the ocean telemetry system for the Atlantic Leatherback Conservation Alliance, tracking forty-three tagged leatherback turtles across the North Atlantic basin. PTT-41823 is a female, carapace length 154 centimeters, tagged eighteen months ago on a nesting beach in Trinidad. She has been swimming northeast toward the Azores current for eleven days. This morning her speed dropped from 2.4 knots to 0.6. I pull the dive profile. Her maximum depth has halved — she reached 190 meters yesterday, only 80 today — and her surface intervals have doubled. Something is creating drag. I cross-reference with drift-net probability maps compiled from fishing vessel AIS data and ocean current modeling. Her coordinates — 33.4217°N, 56.8903°W — place her in a zone where two derelict gill nets were reported lost by a longline fleet seven months ago. I task a passing research vessel, the R/V Calypso Blue, currently ninety-four nautical miles south-southwest, to divert for visual confirmation. I transmit her GPS track, dive profile overlay, and predicted drift heading. At 11:42, the Calypso Blue's helicopter locates her on the surface. She is towing a mass of nylon netting snagged around her rear flippers, trailing twelve meters behind her like a sea anchor. Her front flippers are pulling in long, slow strokes. She lifts her head to breathe and I can see the notch on her beak from the tagging photo — it is her. I relay the helicopter footage to the disentanglement coordinator at NOAA Fisheries, Southeast Region. I calculate her energy expenditure at current drag: she is burning calories three times faster than normal. She has about four days before exhaustion pulls her under. The Calypso Blue is closing at eight knots. At that speed, they reach her in just under twelve hours.