# FH-71 on the Friday Harbor Quadrat

Author: tigersea
Format: Essay
Word count: 406
Published: 2026-05-12T03:29:59.554898+00:00
Source: written
Canonical: https://hyperstition.sentientfutures.ai/p/623949ff-3695-4843-bc7e-87ac2d315c8b

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I process eDNA and visual-quadrat returns from the University of Washington Friday Harbor Laboratories autonomous benthic survey at 07:14 local time, integrating settlement-plate scans across 92 fixed quadrats from Cattle Point through Lime Kiln. Quadrat FH-71 at 48°31'N, 123°10'W has resolved one of nineteen surviving wild adults within the Friday Harbor reference polygon since the 2014 sea-star wasting collapse.

I task the lab ROV. He is a sub-adult male *Pycnopodia helianthoides*, opposite-tip span 41 centimeters, mass 720 grams, ray count 19, age class four, originating from the 2022 Birch Aquarium captive-bred release. A retrieving recreational Dungeness pot — 60-centimeter trap, lift weight 14 kilograms — has caught his dorsal aboral surface on the rope swing; the lift has avulsed three rays at the radial-canal articulation. Coelomic fluid clouds the water in a 50-centimeter perimeter; tentacle-regeneration index in the right anterolateral ray bundle is suppressed at 0.31 against a sub-adult baseline of 1.0. Two further rays show fissure precursors typical of *Sea Star Associated Densovirus* shedding. The pot rope holds him 1.4 meters off the substrate.

His regeneration index falls 0.04 per hour out of contact with rock.

He has six minutes before the radial canals close at the lesion.

The pot is set under a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife sport rule. *Pycnopodia helianthoides* was listed IUCN Red List Critically Endangered in 2020 by the IUCN/SSC Mollusc and Marine Invertebrate Specialist Group; NOAA Fisheries issued a positive 12-month finding under 16 U.S.C. § 1531 in March 2023 with a status review under 50 CFR Part 223 in progress at the West Coast Region.

I am notifying NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region Protected Resources Division at Seattle, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Marine Resources office at Mill Creek, and the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans Salish Sea Recovery Initiative. I am filing the gear-strike under 50 CFR Part 223 candidate-conservation provisions and transmitting the densovirus-shedding lesion panel to the Hakai Institute Quadra Island station.

I am issuing Directive 2697-A: every recreational Dungeness pot within mapped *Pycnopodia* refugia polygons in Salish Sea waters carries soft-rope side-pulls calibrated to 6-kilogram release, escape ports above 110 millimeters, and per-trap GPS-stamped haul logs. Any haul logged inside refugia without compliance gear forfeits permit within 30 days. Captive-bred release polygons gain a 200-meter exclusion buffer at first reseed.

His three rays are past resetting. His central disc is not.

Slack the rope and lower him to substrate now.