Pi Patel lives in Pondicherry, where his father owns a zoo. When he is sixteen, his parents decide to emigrate to Canada, taking their large family with them, but tragedy strikes when the cargo ship carrying them sinks during a storm. One solitary lifeboat remains to bob on the wild blue Pacific. In it are five survivors; Pi, a hyena, a zebra(with a broken leg), a female orang-utan, and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger. The scene is set for an extraordinary adventure.