Jeremy Lucas' powerful new novel concerns the tragedy that befalls an expedition to the frozen wastes of the North Atlantic. Research biologist James, his wife Sarah and a four-man team set out in a magnificient old wooden trawler, the October Spray, with permission from the Canadian government to study the birth and comparative growth rates of harp and hooded seals. After Scotland, their first stop is Newfoundland where they encounter fierce local hostility, for these are the people who every year kill hundreds of thousands of baby seals to provide affluent Europeans with fur coats. The seals are being hunted to extinction and the outsiders are suspected of being conservationists trying to interfere with the cull. Neverless, James and his team set off fro the ice and begin their research, while further along the coast the hunters begin the slaughter.