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With the recent earthquake in the Puget Sound region, I thought it would be worth reviewing a book I read a few months back by James Powlik. The novel was not about earthquakes but did take place in the Northwest near Seattle (about a 4 hour drive from my house). It's about a biological weapon that was thought to be vanguished decades ago only to turn up in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of the State of Washington. The microorganism called Pfiesteria makes water its home and has been artificailly mutated to kill any creature it comes into contact with, eating them alive in the water or by the toxic vapor that it releases.
Stopping Phiesteria's journey through the Pacific and into the Puget Sound is oceanographer Brock Garner's job as he discovered it and has spearheaded an effort that includes other scientists, government and military agencies, and a medical doctor, Ellie Bridges, who saw first-hand what the deadly sea organism could do to its victims.
After a interesting look at what a government might do if something like this was headed for a coastal population, it became a little predictable when Brock turned into a super-oceanographer at the end as he turned a half-crazed idea into a pre-planned success.
He was not only battling the Phiesteria slick but also the media circus that hounded all
involved (causing the reporters to get too close to the slick, making short their lives)
and a multi-millionaire who owned an advanced research vessel and was sticking his nose
into Brock's business.
With all of that going on, Phiesteria was heading for Seattle and had already killed thousands of people and hundreds of seals and whales. Brock stops the onslaught with that half-crazed idea he had and destroys the biological weapon before it reaches Seattle. But he comes to the conclusion as the military did over a generation ago that Phiesteria was extinguished. This is where he may have been mistaken as the deadly microorganism crossed though Sound, there were a few of its cells left behind, in a dormant, harmless state. It needed warmth to excite it into life again and bird foraging for food in the shore waters had inadvertently picked up the Phiesteria cells and flew south along the west coast to warmer temps ... where the food would be plentiful during the coming Winter (for the bird and for the stow away).
Powlik does a good job with the premise of the story and his characters are lively enough, but I can't help thinking this story is nothing more than a complicated way of turning a relatively unknown and insignificant part of the food chain of Earth's oceans into a monster killer story that bears some striking similarities to The Blob.
On a scale of 100 points, with 100 being perfect.
Sea Change: 70