Fan favourite suffers double blow at Margaret River
With surfing resuming at the West Australian break on Monday after a three-day break, Fitzgibbons was one of five Australian women in the round of 16.
Molly Picklum, Isabella Nichols and local wildcard Bronte Macaulay all won their match-ups, while Tyler Wright went down.
Fitzgibbons needed to beat Bryan, the defending Margaret Pro champion, to avoid the top-10 mid-season cut for the third successive year.
A victory in the heat would also secure 14th-ranked Fitzgibbons a place on the 2026 Championship Tour after the WSL announced a larger women's field next year.
If Wright had beaten Lakey Peterson, Fitzgibbons would have requalified, but instead the Californian veteran took the final spot, sending the Australian back to the Challenger Series.
Fitzgibbons opened their heat by attacking a wave to earn a 6.83, and with Bryan uncharacteristically falling off a few waves the 34-year-old NSW surfer looked in control.
She bettered her back-up score with a nervous 4.33, leaving Bryan requiring a 7.33 score to reach the quarter-finals.
But with 90 seconds remaining the Hawaiian launched on to a wave and showed off her power moves in a two-turn combination, wowing the judges to score a 9.00 to take out the heat.
An emotional Fitzgibbons stayed out in the water, devastated to have let the win - and the opportunities it secured - slip away.
"I think for the first, like, 98 per cent of that heat it was all going against me, I could not get it together," Bryan said.
"I'm like, I just need to do two big turns, and I hit the first one as hard as I could and then I was like, OK, just finish this thing, and it all worked out, so I was so stoked that wave came."
Picklum, who would have taken over the yellow rankings leader jersey if Bryan had bowed out, downed American teen Bella Kenworthy, while Macaulay secured a late wave to eliminate 2023 world champion and Olympic gold medallist Caroline Marks.
The pair will meet in the quarter-finals, while the in-form Nichols, who beat France's Vahine Fierro, faces Peterson.
The men's quarter-finals are next into the water, with local qualifier Jacob Willcox the sole Australian.
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