Doc Ford is a marine biologist living in southern Florida.
He is also a former covert agent and assassin for a small government agency without a name, a profession he excelled in for many years. He was highly proficient at hunting targets and even better as eliminating them when found. Eventurally, though, the job weighed too heavy for him and he decides enough was indeed enough and quit.
Now needing a new career, Ford turns to his truest love, the sea. Ford loves sailing on it, living beside it, studying it, fishing it, and protecting it. In addition to his own pet studies, he takes contracts for research projects all in the interest of environmental conservationism. He makes his home in a stilt house on the bay in Sanibel, Florida from where many of the adventures start or take place.
In addition to his intense interest in the ocean, Ford likes his friends, almost to a fault as he often goes to bat for them and occasionally defends them against those with bigger bats. Some of them remain as regular characters in the series, returning to both help Ford out of trouble and help him into it.
A healthy adult male, Doc Ford loves the ladies and there is no doubt that they return his affection. His ability to keep them, however, continually remains a problem so he does tend to go through them rather quickly.
As the series opens, Ford has been away from his violent and dangerous past for several years and had almost started believing it was completely in the past. He would find out he was wrong. While some of the numerous adventures chronicled deal with non-spy activities, each makes use of the skills he honed in his previous life. And those adventures that directly relate back keep him sharp.