CYCLONE

The Caribbean Sea. The local authorities receive reports about an approaching cyclone and issue a general alert, but a small passenger plane, a tour boat and a fishing trawler fail to receive - or heed - the warning and are caught in the storm. The fishing vessel springs a leak and sinks, forcing the fishermen to abandon it; the airplane crashes into the sea, killing most of the passengers and forcing the rest to evacuate; the tour boat's motor is damaged, and one of the tourists is swept overboard and drowns. After the storm has abated, sharks are lured to the area by the dead inside the plane wreck, and subsequently kill one of the drifting survivors.

Once the cyclone is gone, the Mexican coast guard starts a fruitless search for the missing, and after three days they abandon hope of finding any survivors. The plane passengers are picked up by the fishermen, and later they are taken in by the drifting tour boat, for a total of twenty-seven people trying to survive. As food and water run out, the fishermen kill a dog belonging to one of the tourists for them to eat. When one of the fishermen dies, he is used to bait a shark, but the shark manages to snatch the corpse away. When one of the tourists perishes, his body is cut up and his flesh cured and salted for food. In addition, one of the female tourists gives birth to a baby. As the days wear on and the situation becomes more and more desperate, it is decided that several of the passengers and Pitorro, the trawler's captain, use the lifeboat to go for help. The drifters are eventually picked up by a passing American yacht, and rescue efforts are initiated.

As the night passes, a female passenger dies and is cast overboard by her grieving husband. The next day, when Taylor, a selfish passenger from the plane, tries to appropriate some of the sparse water supply for himself, a fight breaks out, in which course the glass bottom of the boat is shattered. The boat sinks, forcing the occupants into the water. As they float in the sea, sharks are attracted to the scene and devour almost half of the shipwrecked, including Taylor, before two seaplanes arrive and rescue the remaining survivors.

After a series of deaths, cannibalism, and a desperate attempt to seek help, the survivors' boat sinks following a fight, and sharks attack, killing many before seaplanes rescue the remaining survivors.

Cyclone closes with a harrowing climax: as hope and supplies dwindle, infighting leads to the boat's destruction, forcing survivors into shark-infested waters. The rescue comes only after significant loss, underscoring the brutal, arbitrary nature of survival and the physical and psychological toll of disaster. The ending lands as a grim reminder of how quickly civilization can erode when nature and desperation take control.