Deadliest Catch

With only six days left in the Opilio crab season the race is on to fill the boats and meet the deadlines.  After pulling up an entire sting of blanks, Capt. Keith on the Wizard has managed to move his pots and after a twenty seven our soak, they are at least managing mediocre numbers.  The relentless work of pot hauling is also now combined with the responsibility of clearing the boat of ice.  As the freezing spray continues to build on the boat forming more and more ice the danger of the already dangerous job becomes much greater.  Even a few inches of ice can add thousands of pounds of ice to a boat making it unstable and a threat to roll over in the Bering Sea.  The task is not one that the crew enjoys, that is except for the greenhorn Crosby who seems to be enjoying everything about the trip so far.  After clearing the ice it’s time to get back to the pots and with three out of the four holds already full it seems like it won’t be long before the trip is over.  However, pulling up pots only half full of crab makes the filling of the last tank a much longer process than anyone imagined and this only lead to more tension on deck between the weary deckhands.

The Northwestern is also faced with the problem of freezing spray causing Captain Sig to refer to his boat as an “Ice Magnet”.  Hauling pots only a mile away from the approaching ice pack, the crew is forced once again to stack the pots on deck and try to keep up the good numbers in an area further south.  The entire process takes 36 hours and as much as the crew would like to keep fishing the same area, they realize losing the pots to the approaching ice would cost them thousands of dollars.

There’s lots more crab need to be caught aboard the Time Bandit where the Hillstrand brothers and their crew need to put close to two hundred thousand more pounds of crab on board in just 36 hours.  The tired crew is also up against building seas as well as fatigue when a large wave hits the boat and knocks the rope dangerously out of the block ending up around the greenhorn Shea.  Reacting quickly, however, he is able to escape and quickly return the rope back to the block narrowly missing an almost certain death as the weight of the pot falling would have easily taken him overboard as well.  As the tired crew continues to grind away without break it becomes apparent that the youngest Hillstrand, has been taking his own share of breaks as a perk of being the Captain’s son.

For the North American the season is finally winding down, and by all means has been a successful return into fishing after the boat’s three year hiatus.  Not nearly as successful as the crew had been hoping for, was the greenhorn nicknamed D-BO, who Captain Sten gracefully has to explain that he just wasn’t fit for crab fishing.  Regardless, there is no shame as D-Bo is well aware he was able to at least in part hold his own out on the Bering Sea.  While returning back to St. Paul to offload they also pause to reflect on the life of the brother of greenhorn Davin Nes, who was killed as the season started.  Jeff Nes had fallen from a stack of crab pots stacked four high on the deck of the Sea Warrior and perished.   Davin and his other brother Jonathan had flown home for the funeral just before the start of their season.   Sadly the world’s most dangerous occupation had claimed another life far before his time.

It’s a fight for bragging rights between the Time Bandit and the Wizard on who will win the weekly Captain’s challenge.  Each boat was allowed to designate one string of 25 pots as the Captains string and the winner would be chosen based on the most crabs during those strings.  Although the Wizard pulls up many pots with over 100 crabs, the last few have small numbers of crabs which brings their average on the string down to a 62.  The Time Bandit continues the lucky streak and ends up with a 75 keeper average on the string.

For the crew of the Northwestern this season has bee anything but easy.  Lacking the high number of crabs per pot they have had to work long hours pulling up low numbers of crabs to fish their quota.  To add insult to injury (Or may the other way around) the picking hook gets thrown about in the heavy seas and ends up whacking Edgar on the forehead, leaving a battle scar of the toil of this year’s season.  Things are even worse on the Early Dawn where it’s almost a mutiny as the crew goes behind the back of the Captain to suggest the owner lease out the boat’s remaining quota,  Obviously the crew has lost of all of their faith in their Captain.

On board the North American a test pot comes up with decent numbers, so Captain Sten decide to try a Haily Mary and “Carpet Bomb” the surrounding area with all of his remaining pots.  In order for his short two week season to be successful he will need those pots to produce strong numbers and his bet pays off.  Capt. Sten previously had never had a pot with more than 100 keepers and soon his numbers are easily exceeding that.  Over on the Cornelia Marie a hydraulic fitting on the crane ruptures and begins leaking hydraulic fluid, while leaving the crippled crane lifeless on deck.  Another daring repair at sea, 30 feet above deck in heavy seas, seems like just another days work to these guys.

Over on the Time Bandit we had another family reunion when Jonathan’s son returned to take the place of his brother Andy who needed to attend to some family business.  We also get a glimpse into the memory of their father (And Grandfather) as the boat is brought in close to the beach to pay respect to his final resting place, facing north and overlooking the approach to the harbor, buried halfway up a mountain.  When it’s all said an done it’s been another profitable season for everyone.  More importantly everyone returned home safe.

The crew aboard the North American continues to struggle as obsolete or missing equipment provides setbacks.  The buoys are hard to find as the boat travels at night without being properly outfitted with high powered sodium lights.  After three of years leasing their quota, rather than fishing, they have no sorting table.  This leaves the hard working crew to have to be constantly bending over and sorting the crabs in the totes.  Another dangerous issue is the fact that in heavy seas the filled totes are constantly sliding all over the deck and could easily take out an unsuspecting crew member as they weight several hundred pounds each.  The lack of proper provisioning isn’t the only obstacle facing the North American as the deck boss is already butting heads with this more experienced crew.  Of course hauling good numbers of crab can easily solve all but the most complicated personality problems.

Meanwhile, aboard the Wizard, Captain Keith goes out on a gamble and attempts to fish an area known as the “Slime Bank”.  This area held record numbers of crab back in the eighties but since has seen little fishing as the crabs seemed to all but disappear.  The aptly named area yields slightly more than large jellyfish as the crew pulls up 19 empty pots.  The hard work of pulling the pots comes without the reward of earnings and before long the Wizard is off to another area to drop it’s pots and try for some late season magic.  After a short soak the numbers look good in an single test pot which came over the rail with around 50 keepers.  However, their new found luck is short lived when a weld on their coiler breaks off, meaning the line on the rest of the pots will need to be hand coiled.  This extra work can be very tedious as well as time consuming but there is no possibility to make the repair while at sea.

Over on the Time Bandit we find Capt Jonathan taking care of an injured bird that found it’s way on the boat while out at sea.  “Squawky” as the bird is named, is treated to a short rest in the captains quarters before being returned to the deck where he disappears a few hours later.  Aside from that, it’s all business pulling pots as an approaching storm front starts to bear down on boat and crew.  Not fairing much better that the bird, we find Capt. Phil aboard the Cornelia Marie continuing his ritual of coffee, Red Bulls, and cigarettes.  To help keep his strength up, his son delivers him a sandwich stuffed with egg and sausage.  How’s that for a healthy diet?  To make matters worse he seems to be coming down with a cold and after 26 hours straight at the wheel decides to take a bit of well earned rest.  Good news is he has finally found the crab.  After a mediocre start his crew has been pulling up large numbers, and even while under pressure from his processor to get back in a few short days to offload, it looks like another very successful season for the Cornelia Marie and her crew.

On the latest episode of Deadliest Catch, we continue to see some boats struggle to find the crab while others are reaping the reward of the Bering Sea and banking on large numbers of crab on every string. Captain Sig makes a decision to move the pots of the Northwestern off of decent crab in an attempt to find bigger and better numbers. The move is not received very well by his crew, but this is Sig’s boat and he is willing to go out on his own. In the end the numbers he finds in his other spot are much lower than what he where he was fishing, which again hurts the morale on deck, especially deck boss Edgar.

Bad luck seems to continue to follow the Time Bandit this season (Didn’t Jonathan talk about a premonition his mother shared before the season started?). This time while pulling pots in 25 foot seas and 40 knot winds, a pin inside a pulley snaps off the boom sending a heavy cable dangerously snapping to deck. Had a pot been attached to the cable, the tension would have forced the cable down on deck with such force that a crew member would have been easily sawed in half. Neal Hillstrand volunteers to climb the boom and repair the pulley and reattach the safety chain in high seas and heavy winds, and it isn’t long before the Time Bandit is back in business narrowly avoiding another catastrophe.

We finally get a glimpse of the North American who will fish for king crab using borrowed pots in a short two week season. The boat is on the cutting edge of “green” technology using it’s patent pending Gen-Tech system to reduce emissions and conserve fuel. The system uses he extra wasted horsepower of the boats main engine to power it’s generator rather than relying on an auxiliary engine. The resulting system saves fuel, maintenance, as well as lowering overall carbon emissions. In the wheelhouse we meet Captain Sten who comes from a long family fishing tradition as well. His father had fished alongside Sig’s father many years ago which I’m sure creates a bit of a rivalry. After leasing their quota to the Wizard the last few years, the North American is back to prove themselves on the Bering Sea. Captain Keith makes sure to gives them a proper welcome as well by tying an outhouse onto one of their pots of them to pull up later. Captain Sten takes the joke rather well then continues to press his crew as time is of the essence.