Pi spots what he assumes is a mirage: a low, brilliantly green island covered in tightly woven, tubular vegetation with trees growing directly from it and no visible soil. As the lifeboat drifts close, Pi tests the “land” with his foot and then his nose, finally believing it is real when he smells dense plant matter. He collapses onto the island, eats the algae, and discovers its outer layer tastes sweet and is wet with fresh water while its inner tube is bitterly salty.

Weak but exhilarated, Pi crawls to a solitary tree for shade and rest, then watches Richard Parker hesitate before coming ashore and disappearing over a ridge. Pi moors the lifeboat by burying an oar in the algae and keeps the boat as his territory. Over successive days Pi regains strength, relearns to stand and walk, and notices Richard Parker repeatedly returns to the lifeboat at night, sometimes agitated; one evening the tiger nearly rushes Pi, then abruptly leaps into the sea to reach the boat, reinforcing Pi’s fear that the new setting could change their fragile balance.

When Pi finally explores beyond the ridge, he finds the island’s interior arranged like a designed landscape: a central forest, hundreds of round ponds, and an immense colony of meerkats numbering into the hundreds of thousands or more. The meerkats fear nothing, nibble algae, stare into ponds, and at times dive in to haul out large fish that are already dead. Pi tastes the pond water and finds it is fresh; he infers the algae continuously desalinate seawater, pushing out fresh water on the surface and leaving salt within, and he bathes gratefully in clean freshwater. Richard Parker begins slaughtering meerkats freely, killing beyond hunger, while the colony remains oddly unruffled.

Pi cleans the lifeboat of accumulated filth and bones, then spends many days recovering: eating algae, drinking, bathing, running, and observing how the island’s algae tighten in heat and loosen in overcast weather or storms, absorbing waves without surf. The island’s ecology remains unnervingly simple: apart from algae, trees, and meerkats, Pi finds virtually nothing else living there. Pi grows nervous as Richard Parker regains full strength, roars, marks trees, and startles Pi in the forest; Pi retrains the tiger with whistle commands and a makeshift hoop routine to reassert dominance and avoid becoming prey.

Pi moves his sleeping place into a tree, and each night the meerkats flood the forest and pack into the branches around him, leaving at dawn; one night Pi sees dead fish rise into a pond under moonlight, but by morning they have vanished. The day before Pi leaves, Pi finds a single tree bearing unusual “fruit,” peels one open, and discovers a human tooth inside; other “fruit” hold a full set of thirty-two teeth, revealing another castaway died there. Pi confirms the island’s danger by dropping a meerkat to the ground and then touching the ground himself, suffering searing burns: at night the algae become highly acidic and the island turns carnivorous, digesting trapped fish and anything on the ground, which is why Richard Parker returns to the boat and the meerkats sleep in trees.

Choosing spiritual survival over comfortable entrapment, Pi decides to leave. He stocks the lifeboat with fresh water, algae, dead fish, and skinned meerkats, and hacks off a large mass of algae to tow as extra supply. Pi waits for Richard Parker, pushes off as soon as the tiger returns, and endures an uneasy night back at sea; by morning the island has vanished, and the towed algae is gone as well, having dissolved the rope with its nighttime acid.