Last weekend, something unusual happened – I had time alone. On Saturday, my dear husband decided to take my son shopping. Oh, all the possibilities of things I could do! I could write, I could clean off my desk, I could sort through old photos, I could paint the kitchen. But, what did I do instead? I plopped my butt on the sofa and watched four hours of “Deadliest Catch.”
“Deadliest Catch” is a series on Discovery that follows crab fisherman though two fishing seasons (king crab and opilio crab). Now some of you that have not seen the show might be thinking “How boring,” but I can tell you that I am as addicted to this show as a crazed housewife is to a soap opera. I guess I should add that the four hours I watched last weekend were repeats…that I had already seen.
The thing that so many people love about “Deadliest Catch” is that there is never a dull moment. In one episode last week, I saw the Northwestern crew retrieve their $5,000 anchor which they had lost, the Time Bandit and Northwestern deal with greenhorns (new guys), and the captain of the Cornelia Marie (Phil Harris) deal with health issues. In the meantime, thousands of pounds of crab were caught in the Bering Sea, a place you really don’t want to be.
I guess what fascinates me so is that these guys are brave enough to do something I can’t even think about doing. Their crab season lasts only a few weeks, but in that few weeks, they work very hard in very treacherous conditions. Oh sure, the money is nice – a deckhand can make between $20,000 $45,000 for two weeks of work. If he doesn’t get dismembered or die first. Crab fishing has an injury rate of 100%, so just stepping on a crab boat almost assures you of an injury. In 2005, there were 118.4 fatalities per 100,000 workers – a rate of dying that is almost 30% high than that of the average worker.
Have I peaked your interest yet with this blog? If so, stay tuned tomorrow for more info about the crab fishermen of the Bering Sea and how they became celebrities.