Deadliest Catch

[Prelude008]

Is any else watching the season that just started. I can't believe that one of the boats sunk and six people died in one show. Any other viewers?

[Indiana]

Yah I watched it while on vacation in Jamaica last month. Such a dangerous job, but it appears that you can make very good $ at it with almost no education. I was amazed at how little sleep those guys get and how many deaths happen out there.

Indy

[BottlesOf]

Pretty decent reality show, although after w few episodes, they all look the same.

[lu_hawk]

how much money do they actually make? how much do they have to work over the course of the year?

[Indiana]

I heard some of the guys saying that they make like 20K for a 6-8 week trip. The higher up you go (like captain) the more you get. Top earning captains get like 60-80K for an 8 week trip i think. As for the annual salary, I don't think its huge because the crabbing season is so short.
Most of the year these guys just sit around drinking and waiting for the season.

Anybody from alaska here?

Indy

[wireMan]

Not from Alaska, but I'm in the industry. One of our salesmen worked a couple seasons back in the early 80's fishing for king crab. Read a couple good books on the topic, one called 'Working on the Edge' was written by one of the captains of the ships.
King crab season is only a couple of days long, and a full deck-hand can earn anywhere from $1000 - $30000 for under 72 hours work. It's actually a huge gamble, everyone gets hurt, either nasty cuts, pulled/strained muscles, or worse, and if your boat isn't catching you don't make any money. Most of the boats do more than just the king crab, so their 'season' is a few weeks long, but if they are catching they can pull down $75K - $100K for only a few weeks worth of work.
The show doesn't do the danger justice though. My wife says I'll never get to go do it, but listening to people that have it sounds like one helluva adrenaline rush.

[Blarg]

I've read the stories about some of the things that happen on those boats, and it's scary as hell. People of course take drugs to stay up more hours and work harder, and everybody gets pretty crazy.

One story that was really disturbing was about a guy having to swim deep into a holding container to unjam something, a fish presumably, that got caught in the tube leading from the deck to the holding container. Basically, the nets sweep up anything and everything in the ocean that can't get out in time. And the ocean is filled with sharp, poisonous, extremely scary things. There was no way to get him out when he dove in, so he was on his own, and had to muscle past thousands of pounds of sometimes still moving and crawling fish in the pitch black to go jam his own body in the chute trying to unjam the fish. Could have gotten chomped, stuck, clamped, poisoned, whatever, at any time, or just held down by the weight off all that stuff in his swim through the ice cold pitch black into the narrow chute, with only a single breath of air. What a crazy, scary way that would be to die.

But someone had to do it. If he didn't, he would have had to forfeit his share, which I understand some of them do when they go out and find out it's just too hard or scary for them.

I think I could handle a lot of stuff, but that sounds like too much for me.

[Quercus]

They changed the fishing rules. Future seasons are based on quota allocations rather than derby style. Net result will be a steep drop in pay to the crew as the length of the season will no longer be an issue.

The theory is that the result will be that its a much safer job, but given the way its set up, it looks more like a way to guarantee the profits of the owners and processing plants at the expense of those lower on the totem pole. (Quota is based on past performance and I believe the only way to get a license to fish is to buy out one of the existing owners. Inexplicably to me, processing plants now also get a quota of the harvest rather than bidding against one another.)

[JaBlue]

I watch very little TV and liked this show a lot.

[Prelude008]

The previous season that just finished was for Alaskan King Crabs. They went out for about 4 1/2 days. The boat and captain take a huge percent the revenue and the crew splits their share. Most seemed to average, if I remember correctly, 6-8K for the four days. I can't imagine doing so much physically demanding work on little to no sleep. The money is like a poker jackpot. Their shares are based on how much they catch and how many crew members they need to share with.