As the oceans warm, a new species of medusa (jelly fish) invades the northern Pacific ocean. When the jellies begin hunting humans, Captain Percival Ronald Wilson and his crew are hired to hunt them.
The story begins with the disappearance of boaters off the northern coast of America. The jellies, being a new predator, eat local fish. When that supply runs low, they turn to hunting human prey.
Twenty-seven feet long and seven feet in diameter, adult jellies possess six strong arms and thirty-two poison-injecting tentacles. A ring of eyes surrounds the body and the stomach is filled with an acid that dissolves its prey, dead or alive.
These new predators seek to continue their new species by mating, laying eggs and sperm that will turn into polyps or plant-like creatures. These future jellies live on the ocean floor until something triggers their transformation into thousands or millions of new predators.
When a coast guard ship is lost, a salvage ship is hired to recover the sunken vessel. Enter Captain Wilson and his ship, The Pequad, a sea-going salvage tug named in honor of the ship The Pequot from Moby Dick. He and his crew hunt the jellies to the Bering Sea, then across the Pacific to Japan, as the jellies invade just as a massive hurricane bears down on them.
(About the Author)
Aden Smith, as told by Bryan Misuraca, is a character in the book. He runs a monster hunter website, going from a coach potato sorting news about monsters, to a crew member on The Pequad. Motivated by writing about the beasts, he tells the story of his odyssey across the Pacific. Bryan Misuraca lives in St. Louis, Missouri, where the rivers meet.