Fragment (novel)

Fragment (Random House, 2009), is a science-based thriller by bestselling author and screenwriter, Warren Fahy. The novel focuses on a crew of young scientists from a reality TV show who must try to survive when their research vessel, the Trident, lands on Henders Island, where predatory creatures have been living and evolving for over half a billion years.Producer Lloyd Levin optioned Fahy's screenplay adaptation of Fragment for a major motion picture. Pandemonium, Fahy's sequel to Fragment, was published in March 2013.

In 1791, Captain Ambrose Henders and his crew stop at a tiny island in search of fresh water in the South Pacific. After one man, Henry Frears, is sent to obtain water, Captain Henders is forced to retreat to prevent more loss of life when Frears is eaten by unknown creatures. He writes of the account in his journal.

In the present day, an exploratory research vessel "The Trident" sails across the same stretch of the Pacific filming for a documentary series called Sea life. The ship is piloted By Captain Sol and has a crew of cameramen and researchers including Nell Duckworth, Andy Beasley, Zero Monroe, Jesse Jones, Dawn Kipke, Glynn Fields, their dog Copepod and Cynthea Leeds, their boss. When Captain Sol picks up an EPIRB distress beacon, The crew decides to investigate, partly to rescue a marooned sailor, but also to investigate the accounts of Captain Henders more than a century ago. Cynthea sends the crew ashore to scope out the shipwrecked "Balboa Bilbo", where the distress beacon emanated from. After arriving at the wreck, Copepod disappears and the rest of the crew are attacked by monstrous creatures. In the ensuing chaos, Zero drops his camera, and it captures the deaths of Glynn, Jesse, and Dawn as Cynthia and her fellow crew member Peach watch in horror with the rest of the world on the live feed. Nell and Zero barely manage to escape with their lives.

A day later, halfway around the world, Biologist Geoffrey Binswanger and his friend Angel Echevarria are studying arthropods (primarily Horseshoe crabs and Mantis Shrimp) at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. They hope to gain insight into the immune systems of the horseshoe crab and to study the spreading of the Mantis Shrimp. Geoffrey also studies the reproductive strategies of various organisms and how the predator-prey relationship may have caused the evolution of sexual reproduction. In a lecture later that night, he discusses this theory and the "Sea Life" incident, the latter of which Geoffrey believes to be a hoax.

...
Wikipedia