Gordo Stevens is trying to make friends at his new school and struggling to come to terms with his parents’ divorce—he’s in no mood for a week-long school trip to a remote island marine teaching station. But there are bigger problems on the horizon, like the fact that the marine biologist who runs the school suddenly has to leave the island, and their radio dies, leaving them without a link to the mainland. A pod of beached pilot whales seems doomed to perish—unless the students can find a way to get them get back to sea.