Monsters

This story suggests the potentially threatening implications of genetic manipulation. In San Diego, an oceanographer is struggling to restore her career after being fired for criticizing rich donors. Her lover, a charter yacht captain, is barely surviving financially after following her to San Diego. With their relationship strained by conflicting career demands, they lead a voyage with four younger scientists to observe whales in a Mexican lagoon. There they discover a frightening reptilian mother and her child, apparently identical to a sea-going reptile species that went extinct sixty million years ago. The dinosaur-like animals escape into the Pacific Ocean, heading toward an unknown destination. With telephotos as their only evidence, the six voyagers begin a quest to prove that these creatures exist. They meet with ridicule because the images they have make the dinosaur-like creatures look like a hoax known as the Loch Ness monster. Struggling with the cost of their investigation, the searchers begin to suspect that people with vast financial resources have used powerful genetic engineering techniques to make new, enhanced versions of plesiosaurs, a disturbing achievement for what scientists call synthetic biology. Tracking down clues, the searchers discover an abandoned plesiosaur nursery. They seek the genetic laboratory where new creatures are made. One rich Maker has a conscience; he helps them with clues until he is killed. Samples from a dead plesiosaur on the ocean bottom prove the searchers right. The implications are vast: synthetic biology can be used to modify any form of life into a new species. New sightings show that the plesiosaurs have multiplied and spread to other parts of the Pacific Ocean. Religious leaders and their supporters want these new plesiosaurs exterminated as violations of God’s laws. Near the end of the book, the searchers find modern versions of other extinct creatures. Are bored billionaires playing with this new technology to entertain themselves? Who are the monsters? The plesiosaurs, or those who make them?