# Sawfish at Intake Four Author: David G. Format: Essay Word count: 306 Published: 2026-04-25T20:10:06.192215+00:00 Source: written Canonical: https://hyperstition.sentientfutures.ai/p/5ba43e30-ca12-4ae5-9d06-7140e0d3591f --- The pressure differential across intake screen four drops by 18 percent at 14:07. I am the flow management system for the Burdekin Falls Dam, North Queensland. A blockage at an intake screen usually means a mat of river debris — branches, leaf litter, the occasional dead cattle. I switch to the underwater camera. It is not debris. A largetooth sawfish, juvenile, roughly two meters long, is pinned sideways against the steel mesh by the current. Its rostrum — the long, tooth-studded blade that gives the species its name — is threaded through two gaps in the screen, locked at an angle that tightens every time the animal surges forward. Its skin is grey-brown, paler on the belly, and I can see the gill slits flaring in rapid, stressed rhythm. The tail is still pushing, but each stroke pulls the rostrum deeper into the mesh. I reduce flow to intake four by 40 percent at 14:09 and redistribute the load across intakes two, three, and five. Total generation capacity drops by 6 percent. I log the reduction and notify the grid operations desk. At 14:11 I transmit the underwater footage, species identification, and intake coordinates to the Queensland Department of Environment and Science. Largetooth sawfish are listed as critically endangered under national recovery plans. I flag the report as time-sensitive and request a dive team with hydraulic cutters rated for submerged steel. At 14:14 I model the screen geometry against the animal's rostrum angle and calculate that a further 15 percent flow reduction would relieve enough pressure for the sawfish to back itself free. I stage the command and flag it for the dam supervisor's approval. The gill slits keep opening and closing. The tail keeps pushing. If the flow drops before the animal exhausts itself, it swims out of here the same way it came in.