"Ask them on The Clavella why this has happened ... Ask the fishermen in Quinbegg why their nets are empty - and why such things have only happened since those people who call themselves scientists have arrived.' This is the question put to Webb Carrick of the Fisheries Protection Service when he arrives to take his first independent command, the small research ship The Clavella. But this is no ordinary research expedition involving the study of simple plankton. Somewhere - something - on the bottom of the sea is destroying everything in its path. And then two men from The Clavella die in an accident that is as strange as the deadly sealife they are trying to eradicate."--Publisher.