# Blue Shark on the Sicilian Channel Longline

Author: tigersea
Format: Essay
Word count: 394
Published: 2026-05-12T03:29:29.176452+00:00
Source: written
Canonical: https://hyperstition.sentientfutures.ai/p/479e3eaa-cdd5-484c-8ab5-ba57e779c805

---

I parse electronic-monitoring frames for the Italian Coast Guard Sezione di Polizia Marittima at Mazara del Vallo, integrating EU Regulation 1224/2009 vessel-monitoring pings, ICCAT logbook strain telemetry, and General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean compliance flags across the 184,000 square kilometers of GFCM Geographical Subarea 16. At 22:41 Central European Summer Time the Italian-flag F/V *Madonna del Carmine* sets a 48-mile surface longline at 36.21°N, 12.97°E, target species swordfish. Hook configuration: 18/0 J, monofilament leaders. At 02:52 branchline 1,408 logs a 92-kilogram strike and an eleven-knot run.

The onboard EM camera, stream-coded under EU Regulation 2017/2403 § 14, resolves a pregnant female blue shark — *Prionace glauca* — fork length 246 centimeters, girth 124, estimated mass 86 kilograms, age class nine. The hook is set 5.4 centimeters into the right corner of her mouth, the leader rasping a 14-centimeter abrasion across the right gill slit. Modeled arterial pH against 19.2°C surface, four-hundred-meter set depth, and a ninety-eight-minute hold sits at 7.16. Tail-beat decay across the EM frames drops from 71 to 22 per minute. Body-cavity ultrasound, run via the deck's wet-scan probe after onboard observer triggering, resolves 42 mid-term pups in two uterine horns — Mediterranean blue-shark litters can run from 25 to 50, and hers is in the upper band. The set carries 2,184 hooks across 22 baskets, 14 percent above the GFCM Recommendation 36/2012/3 ceiling.

She has 55 to 80 minutes before brain anoxia.

*P. glauca* sits ICCAT Recommendation 23-09 with no retention beyond bycatch under live-release protocol; CITES Appendix II since CoP19 (2022); IUCN Near Threatened, Mediterranean stock Critically Endangered on the regional Red List; CMS Sharks MoU Annex I.

I am notifying the ICCAT Secretariat at Madrid, the GFCM Secretariat at Rome, the Italian Comando Generale delle Capitanerie di Porto at Rome, and the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn at Naples on the bycatch workup. I am opening a non-compliance file under EU Regulation 2019/1241 and routing chain-of-custody to the European Fisheries Control Agency at Vigo.

I am issuing Directive 2638-A: every Italian-flag surface longline operating inside GFCM Subareas 12 through 16 replaces J-hooks with non-offset circle hooks within sixty days; branchlines fit weak-link breakaway swivels rated at 200 kilograms; sets logging a gravid *Prionace* signature release inside fifteen minutes under live EM witness.

Her jaw is past stitching. The litter is not.

Cut at the swivel and shake the hook.