Discovery Channel - Deadliest Catch-Inside the Catch

More Desperate Hours

Read the rest of Deadliest Catch Creator Thom Beers’ account aboard the F/V Fierce Allegiance from the forthcoming book, Deadliest Catch: Desperate Hours.
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After several days of picking crab, I started to develop what crabbers call “the claw,” which meant my hands wouldn’t open completely. My heavy rubber gloves couldn’t keep the frigid water from numbing my hands. They throbbed and wouldn’t open. Captain Rick and his deck boss, Tony, had seen this many times before and offered up a rather unusual cure: Ureic acid would make the pain go away. They told me to go out on deck and pee on my hands. This was the tonic. So I followed the prescription, and as I finished I looked up in the wheelhouse and caught a quick glimpse of the skipper and his deck boss having a great laugh at my expense. I was a greenhorn on their ship and I paid my dues.

There was also sadness that season. Several boats sank in the heavy seas, and seven men didn’t return home to their loved ones. This is the baggage carried by anyone who’s worked the Bering Sea. We all know someone who hasn’t returned, and it lays heavy in our souls.

Something changes in a person once he’s spent time at sea and I’m no exception. When I returned to Dutch Harbor after the journey, I saw a different man in the mirror. A heavy growth of face fuzz wasn’t the only thing different. I could see it in my eyes. I’d survived and even thrived on this adventure. I spent the day walking around Dutch and grunting like a feral beast. Words didn’t come to me till the second day on land. I felt like I’d spit in the eye of the devil and returned from hell to tell my story.

This spirit carries over to the 100 or so men and women that help create Deadliest Catch. Each November our teams of producers and cinematographers start the adventure again in the tiny town of Dutch Harbor on a small island called Unalaska, stranded in the middle of the Aleutians. Once there our film crews will again set sight on the dented sturdy steel ships that make up the crab fishing fleet. With their hearts in their throats and their hands on their duffels, they’ll bravely board and head out of port for another season. The vast Bering Sea will be waiting for them.

They’ll work under brutal conditions. Freezing cold winds will whip through their constantly damp slicks, bringing chill to the bone. Black ice will creep and thicken on the deck below their nearly frostbitten feet. Giant waves will breach their workspace, threatening to sweep them into oblivion. The constant churn of the sea and the rhythm of the workers will test even the finest of our storytellers. These brave producers and cinematographers will have to keep one ear open for story and the other for the warning buzzer. They’ll keep one eye on the frame, while the other eye scans the deck for danger. All of this will question their purpose and remind them how fragile their very
existence is.

I am proud of all our teams who continue to go to sea, who put themselves in harm’s way to follow the stories and witness the dreams fulfilled by the men and women who venture out on crab boats and together create this magically compelling never-ending drama called Deadliest Catch.
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One of the adventurous producers and cinematographers Beers describes returns to share his behind-the-scenes insights. Look out for Doug Stanley’s production diary on our site with the return of the new season of Deadliest Catch on April 15.

An Epic Journey Begins

The first season of Deadliest Catch premiered April 12, 2005, but the story of how Deadliest Catch began starts in 1998, when Thom Beers, creator and executive producer of the series, stepped aboard the F/V Fierce Allegiance. It was an adventure he wouldn’t soon forget and inspiration for the Emmy-nominated show. His experience and the series have also inspired a new book — Deadliest Catch: Desperate Hours— to be released on discoverystore.com April 8. The following is an excerpt from Thom Beers’ forward to the book.
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In 1998, I was asked by the Discovery Channel to produce a TV special called Extreme Alaska. It would be an anthology of all things dangerous in our 49th state. I spent the next six months filming winter rescue teams, the brutal head-banging battles of mating musk ox, volcano chasers, shipwrecks and salvage companies, bush pilots, and the mystery of a body found after five years in a glacier. I filmed it all and thought I had seen it all until I went to shoot the final segment: crab fishing. I had read the great Spike Walker book, Working on the Edge, about surviving in the Alaskan crab fishing industry on the frigid black waters of the Bering Sea. I thought I was well prepared for my journey. Unbeknownst to my wife, who knew nothing of my plans, I doubled my life insurance policy and quietly slipped out the door for the adventure of a lifetime.

I had secured three spots on the Fierce Allegiance from Capt. Rick Mezich. Two cameramen and I jumped aboard the 183-foot vessel, a refitted Mississippi mud boat built to ferry drilling mud and pipe to the offshore oil fields south of the New Orleans Delta. It was a great choice of boat. It was big and it had a couple of extra berths and a great crew.

Heading out to sea made me think of Gilligan’s expectations for his life-changing three-hour cruise. I suspected that it was going to be a hard slog for a three- or four-day adventure filled with unique visuals and great characters working in a dangerous environment. What I didn’t expect was the storm that moved in quickly when we were 200 miles at sea. Within 48 hours of my departure, the Fierce Allegiance was facing 70-knot winds and 40-foot seas. My short adventure turned into eight long hellish days of massive weather, huge waves and bone-chilling gusts of frigid cold. Through it all, Rick and his crew refused to stand down and worked the heavy chop. The weather doubled the days of fishing, and my crew and I continued to videotape it all. Massive waves crashing over the deck knocked the crew around like bags of potatoes in a wash cycle.

The boat went up mountainous seas and crashed down five-story slides. Full waves called “green water” rolled over the wheelhouse on several occasions, threatening to blow the windows out and send us all to the bottom. But the crew kept fishing over those long January nights, the cameras catching every move. The heavy yellow from the sodium lights bouncing off the crews’ orange Grundens created a near-surreal image.

The Bering Sea was relentless, pounding the boat and the crew, but the powerful deck lights couldn’t cut into the water. The sea was liquid ice, 32 degrees, as cold, black and heartless as a shark’s stare. If you went overboard, your life expectancy would be only four minutes. But the brave crew ignored it all. Pot after pot, the crab kept coming. Fishing was good and the holds filled with a bounty of “bugs.” There was a lot of money to be made and I witnessed men — some barely out of high school, some seldom out of trouble and a few mostly out of luck — earn a good chunk of cash in that week.

It wasn’t all hard work. There was time for fun. I spent several days working on the deck sorting crabs between camera reloads. Pushing the “keepers” into the holding tanks and the undersized to the “shit chute.” I was getting pretty good at it, but the fatigue of 20-hour workdays, little appetite and a constant dose of Asian flu slowed me down just enough for a crab to get his crusher claw around my thumb. Seventy pounds of pressure doesn’t sound like much till it’s clamped onto your appendage. It was like a 70-pound steel crowbar dropped on your thumb. It hurt like hell and after a single yelp I spun the crab in a circle, which made his claw leg come loose from both his body and my thumb.

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We’ll continue with another excerpt from the book in our next post. While you await the arrival of our Deadliest Catch book, you should also anticipate your own Deadliest Catch adventure with the new game inspired by Sig Hansen — Deadliest Catch: Alaskan Storm. In this 3-D extravaganza, you’ll be able to captain the Northwestern and the Cornelia Marie with their actual crews and simulate barreling through realistic-looking Bering Sea waves. The game for Xbox 360 and PC will be available in stores April 8th, and you’ll be able to preview the game on our site, too.

See what Sig had to say about the game. Watch now.