[reporter speaks]
[Jake speaks]
Same caffeine.
[groans] wow. Same nicotine.
[Phil] It's gonna be a heavy tobacco consumption day today.
Same stress intake.
[Phil] Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey!
Who asked you to talk?
[bleep] dammit! Don't talk.
Damn it!
Patience isn't one of my virtues.
[sighs]
But you do it 'cause you have to do it.
That's how we have to survive.
[siren blares]
[Johnathan] Got an exhaust leak.
[Jake] A thousand things that could go wrong.
A thousand things that could kill you.
Oh, [bleep].
Watch the rail. Watch the rail.
Big wave.
No brakes.
Yeah, good thing we just moved all of our gear up here.
Now it's worthless.
Let's get these things moved into a legal area.
Put on the gas until there's nothing left in the tank.
Watch the rail! Watch the rail!
Get down! Get down!
Oh, [bleep]! Ah!
Hopefully I'll make it through.
Raise a Red Bull to Phil.
[can opens]
[Jake] Here's to you, buddy.
[Phil] Crab fishing, man.
That's the game on.
[narrator] 300 miles northwest of Dutch Harbor,
on the western bairdi grounds.
[Jake] Holy [bleep].
This is [bleep] scary.
I'm about to ask the impossible of the crew.
So you see this gully right here?
This is deeper.
The bairdi, they like it deep.
The way it's laying east and west, that means I'm gonna
be setting in the ditch
and probably hauling in the ditch as well.
Four weeks after taking the helm of the storied
Cornelia Marie, Captain Jake Anderson makes contact
with the season's first Arctic storm.
Born in the upper latitudes of the Norton Sound,
the 200-mile-wide low pressure system descends onto
the northern grounds,
boasting gale force winds and rifling 28-foot waves of
the crew across an exposed starboard rail.
170,000 pounds is what I'm responsible for bringing in.
So I'm gonna do what
I never do.
I'm gonna set with the weather on the side.
It's gonna be hell on 'em.
[Albinio] Buddy!
Watch your ass.
-Watch your ass. -[man #1] I'll watch their ass.
[man #2] I'll watch your ass!
Whoo-ha-ha!
This is no bull [bleep] ring, dude.
[bleep] hey.
Be careful out there, guys. You ready?
[Albinio] Yeah.
Look out!
[bleep]!
Go slow. Be safe.
All right, here goes the first one.
-[man #1] Yeah! -[men yell indistinctly]
[man #2] Oh!
[Albinio] Here we go! Oh.
[Albinio groans]
Up! Up!
Oh.
[Albinio] Oh!
[bleep] damn.
[man #1] Let her go.
[Jake] Let's see if we can hold the course.
I have to go really fast in order to keep the boat stable.
Oh, we're setting right in the ditch.
It's pretty [bleep] back here.
[exhales]
Oh.
[Cody yells]
[bleep]!
Watch the rail! Watch the rail!
Get down! Get down!
Oh, [bleep].
[men groan]
[bleep]!
[man groans]
[bleep] me. [bleep]!
[man groans]
[bleep]!
[man #1] OK.
Everybody good?
[Albinio] All good, captain.
Pretty exposed back here, so it's not very fun.
[man #1 speaks]
Ah.
[bleep] did you see that [bleep] thing?
Oh. Oh [laughs].
[Jake] Oh.
There's too much work to be done to -- to just stop.
I gotta get to the delivery date exactly on time.
OK, I'm gonna go on this course.
[Jake speaks]
[Albinio] Roger!
[Cody groans] Help! [bleep]!
[bleep], I can't wait till this day is over.
[Albinio] Let go of her.
Just 15 miles southwest of the Cornelia Marie...
[Johnathan] OK.
...on the Time Bandit,
[men yell]
There's some miserable [bleep] going on here.
The storm's here, so we gotta be real careful.
Both sides of this hill here.
-[men yell] -[Johnathan] Watch out.
I'm gonna put every one of my pots just around that depth.
120 fathoms wraps around the whole mountain there.
But, uh, I can't sail west
'cause the guys will be getting waves right in their face.
[man #1] Whoa!
[bleep]!
That's when someone gets killed.
72 hours before his final offload,
Captain Johnathan Hillstrand targets $300,000 of
golden king crab.
But, like Jake, he's threatened by the same northerly wind
and waves aimed at his deck and crew.
But Johnny, he's got a different playbook at hand.
The guys are exposed right now.
You can tell by that flag going that way.
That means the weather's on our side.
So that's our flag starts facing me,
and then the guys will be OK.
Yeah, sort of hang out, hide out, and I'll tell you when.
[man #1] Roger.
♪♪
[Johnathan] Here we go.
Now the wind's straight ahead of us.
Now the wind's on the other side of the boat right now.
The guys are protected now.
OK, guys, we're gonna start setting.
Be careful here.
Just takes a second for one of these rogue waves to come over.
OK, go ahead and set, guys.
[Russell] All right, going over.
[man #1] Going over.
[man #2] Whoo, baby! Yeah!
[man #1] Coming for ya!
[man #2] Give us some crab, baby.
[Rick] All right, guys.
-[man #2] Whoo! -[man #1] Whoo-hoo!
Coming over.
Come back loaded.
Opa!
OK, hang on, guys.
Watch out, watch out. Watch out.
Watch out, guys. Watch out, watch out, watch out.
On the Time Bandit...
[Johnathan] Hang on, guys.
Watch out, guys. Watch out, watch out, watch out.
[Rick] Watch out, men!
[Johnathan] Watch out, guys. Watch out, watch out, watch out.
[man #1] Holy [bleep].
-[man groans] -[man #1] Watch out.
It's really [bleep] out so be careful.
That was a good one.
When he says something, we absolutely do it
right there. -Right.
-Just run. -[man #2] Roger that.
OK, let's set another one.
You're gonna set, then you're gonna hide.
You're gonna set, you're gonna hide.
-[Rick] All right, men. -[man #1] All right.
[Johnathan] As quick as we can, so we don't hurt nobody.
[Rick] [indistinct] roger that.
[Johnathan speaks]
[Russell speaks]
-OK, go ahead, son. -[Rick] Come on!
-Rolling! -[man #1] Whoo-hoo!
OK, come on back. Get under the shelter deck.
[men yell] Let's go!
Gotta watch my guys. We were just taking
right on our side.
-Come on back out. -[man #2] Let's do it.
[beep]
[man #3] Come back. OK, get the bag.
-OK, hide, hide, hide. -[man #1] Just go, go, go.
[Russell] Watch out, men!
-Go ahead and set this one. -[Rick] Coming for ya.
-[men yell] -[beep]
[man #1] Go fishing!
[man #2] Run, run, run, run, run!
[man #1] Come on, guys!
[Johnathan] You go ahead and start, guys.
[man #2] Go, go!
Fight against the deadline. We gotta make it in on time.
We got a long ways to go, so come on, lady luck.
[man #2] Over!
80 miles south,
just outside Norton's reach,
on the Wizard...
[Monte speaks]
He said the weather was terrible and went in.
I think he was just kind of wore out.
Can take a lot out of you.
You know, I came back up.
But there's a closed area out there.
My brother's got crab pots in it.
So I was just like, "Oh, [bleep]" when I saw this
last night, I was like, "What the [bleep]?"
After taking the helm from his exhausted brother,
Keith, Captain Monte Colburn steams toward 50 baited pots
set in the 10,000 square mile restricted zone.
[Monte] It's hard to say what Enforcement
and/or Fish and Game is gonna do.
Fishing in a closed area, I have no idea what
the repercussions of that could be.
It could be pretty ugly.
But not before calling a crab co-op representative
for advice.
[phone dialing]
[Ethan speaks]
[Monte] Yeah, hello.
Let me tell you what we got going here.
Late last night when I was leaving town,
I noticed that my brother didn't have the bearings for
the closed box, and he has set and hauled some gear
out of that box.
And there's still pots baited in the closed box.
It looks like about 50 pots.
Yeah, it's unfortunate.
OK, well, thanks again. Bye.
We got a serious problem up here.
It's, uh...
It's a bummer.
There's gon' be some long faces
when we start dumping pots, I can guarantee you that.
In addition to potentially forfeiting $16,000 of crab
harvested from the restricted zone, Monte and the Wizard crew
must release 50 pots worth of bairdi back into the sea,
costing two days and thousands of dollars of fuel.
[Monte] Probably close to 350,000 pounds to catch.
And here we are
with gear out of bounds.
Let's just go get our gear out of there,
and we'll get to work.
85 miles northeast
on the western bairdi grounds.
[Jake] I need some luck, and I know just the place to get it.
I saved this for a special occasion like
a good occasion.
It's a rose gold rope Phil Harris gave me about
20 years ago.
I've had it this whole time. Rarely do I wear it until now.
Aboard the Cornelia Marie.
-All right, you guys ready? -[Albinio] Yeah, roger.
[Jake] Because we're in rough weather, I couldn't get
the pots right where I wanted to.
See what we get out of it.
-[men] Whoa! -[Albinio] Watch your head!
[Jake] Here we go.
[Albinio] Get it, get it, get it, get it.
Nice, [bleep] pots.
Yeah, baby.
170,000 pounds is what I'm responsible for bringing in.
The owners are gonna wanna see it, too.
It doesn't matter who you are. It's a lot of pressure.
Hopefully you'll see something.
You should see something.
[Cody] Pot coming up!
Here comes the first pot. Let's see what it brings us.
[Albinio] Come on, big money, big money, big money.
Up, up.
[man #1] What have we got? What have we got?
There we go.
I got some nice little dinner plates in there.
[men] Whoa!
Holy [bleep], dude, there's crab here.
[man #1] Whoo!
There's [bleep] crab here, dude.
[Albinio] Oh, [bleep].
[Albinio speaks]
Oh, [bleep].
[man #1 & Albinio speak]
[bleep].
[Jake] I'm getting life. It's the wrong kind.
Only legally allowed to harvest one species at a time,
Captain Jake must avoid all opilio crab or face thousands
of dollars in fines.
[Albinio] That's a bairdi.
-Got red eyes. -[indistinct]
Opilio, greenish eyes.
You can tell, definitely by the mouth.
[man #1 speaks]
[Albinio speaks]
[Jake] All right, stack this. We're moving it.
[Albinio] Roger.
Off the rack.
OK, good!
[Jake] I've gotta go figure out something.
'Cause I'm running out of time for my bairdi.
The farther we go west, the closer we are to
the opie grounds.
I'm grabbing my gear, and I'm heading southeast.
Deeper. The exact opposite direction.
[man #1] Oh.
[bleep].
Oh, [bleep]. Gotta watch the rail.
That's a 25-footer right there.
Hang on.
[man #1] Watch out!
[men yell indistinctly]
Watch the rail, watch the rail, watch the rail.
Get down!
On the Cornelia Marie.
[Jake speaks]
Watch the rail, watch the rail, watch the rail.
[Jake yells]
[Jake groans]
[bleep], man, I don't know.
[bleep] freight train came through.
[Jake speaks]
[Albinio speaks]
[Jake speaks]
It's [bleep] nasty out.
But we've gotta get the [bleep] out of here.
We can't stop right now.
I'm running out of time, and we'll just stack these on
and get 'em out of here as fast as we can.
[man #1] Good?
I think the best attribute of Phil's, he's always inspired
by the underdog.
Phil found his way forward and made his mark.
Hopefully I'll make it too.
22 miles to the southwest,
in the heart of the storm,
on the golden king crab grounds.
[Johnathan] Hang on, boys.
[Johnathan speaks]
[men yell]
[Johnathan] It's getting [indistinct] here.
So, it seems like right in this depth here should be
a lot of crab.
That wraps around the whole mountain there.
That's 120 fathoms.
I think the crab are liking that depth.
Hopefully, we get into town
and don't miss our cannery offload deadline.
Not sure if we have what we need in the gear.
It's gonna be close.
Watch out on that rail.
[man #1] Whoa, whoa.
I gotta watch my guys.
We're just taking it right on our side.
[Russell] Come on, baby!
Come on, crabs.
[man #1] Oh, [bleep], damn it.
Ah.
[man #1] That sucks.
[man #1 speaks]
Ah.
Fun, fun, fun.
[man #2] Let's go, man. Come on.
[Russell] I think we got some crab here.
[Johnathan] We'll see.
[man #1] Yeah, baby. Look at that.
[man #2] That's what I'm talking about?
[man #3] Yeah!
[men cheer]
Oh, that was a big one right there.
-[man #1] Whoo, come on, crab! -[man #2] Oh!
[man #1] Whoo-hoo!
[man #2 speaks]
I got a fighting chance now.
[man #1] Oh, yeah, baby.
[man #2] Ah, [indistinct] [bleep].
-Whoo! -Whoo-hoo, look at that pot.
[man #3] Oh, watch out, watch out, watch out.
-Watch out, get down. -[Johnathan] Right there.
I set everything around this mountain there.
So far, so good.
[man #1] Whoo! Yeah!
If we're lucky, we'll have over a 50 average out of this.
[man #1] Oh, yeah. Big crabbies.
[bleep] [bleep].
[bleep].
-[Johnathan speaks] -[Russell] Roger.
Hang on, baby.
Holy moly!
Watch out.
-[bleep] -[siren blares]
-[Johnathan] Oh, my God. -[siren blaring]
[Johnathan] What the [bleep] going on!
Hey, Neal!
Find out what the [bleep] is going on.
[siren blares]
[Johnathan] Hey, Neal!
Find out what the [bleep] is going on.
[Neal speaks]
Hey, guys, stand by.
Roger.
Damn, man, this is bad.
[Neal coughs]
[continues coughing]
[Neal] So, just a exhaust leak.
All right.
We took that wave, and it snapped that
wrinklebelly pipe on the exhaust.
[Johnathan coughs] Uh, the flex pipe?
-The exhaust, right? -Yeah.
We gotta fix that before we go any further.
[coughs]
[Neal] I don't know, man.
[Johnathan] Keep an eye on it,
and let's just get through this trip.
We'll go to town and fix it right.
Yeah.
Carbon monoxide displaces oxygen,
acting as an asphyxiant.
Left unchecked in the Time Bandit's cramped interior,
John and the crew can suffer nausea, shortness of breath,
and even respiratory and cardiac failure.
[Johnathan coughs]
This could kill you, you know?
People die from exhaust asphyxiation.
What do they call it?
It's a silent killer.
If we all went to sleep, that could have killed us.
Hey, guys.
-All right, man. -[man #1] All right.
Hopefully, Neal can get us back in fighting shape.
We just gotta get through this.
We set another string up, another down.
Hopefully they'll come up good.
Load this boat up and go home.
On the western bairdi grounds.
Inside Alaska Fish and Game's restricted zone.
[Monte] Now, come on out.
Just so you can understand what's going on, too.
So this is our northernmost string.
From last trip, my brother sent these pots.
There's a very large, defined, closed area.
We are within that box.
So these have to be rail dumped,
just make sure every last crab goes over the side.
We'll get these taken care of and we'll get back to work.
We got about a mile.
Double time.
[man #2 speaks]
[man #3] Why not?
[Robby] Came out to what we thought was gonna be some great
fishing, but apparently we set all of our gear here
in the out of bounds.
So now I have to rail dump everything.
[Monte] There's some crab in it.
Wow! It's about as good as it gets.
[Robby speaks]
It's a real bummer to dump them back into the ocean.
You know, that being said, we know where to look for it.
We're in 92 fathoms. It's out of bounds.
[man #1] Oh, man. Aw.
[man #2] Sucks!
You know, for us, let's just get these things picked up
and get them moved in the same type of depth into a legal area
and get back to work. -[man #1] Damn it.
Try to remedy this as quickly as possible.
[man #1 speaks]
38 miles northeast,
on the bairdi grounds...
[Jake speaks]
There's [bleep] big waves out here.
Aboard the Cornelia Marie.
I changed up my plan the other night because I was looking for
bairdi and I ran across smack dab on this school of opies.
Time to pick up that string I set.
Hopefully it hits something because we need to start
putting some crab on the boat.
After hauling opilio instead of bairdi crab, Captain Jake
steers south into the heart of the Arctic storm,
betting on 140 pots to deliver the 60,000 pounds
he needs before offload.
For some reason, holding on to the gold chain
makes me feel like
warm and fuzzy inside.
Let's see. We're gonna find out.
If it hits, it hits.
♪♪
[bleep] superstitions. But I believe in it.
I'm gonna believe in it.
Hold on to [bleep].
[man #1 speaks]
[bleep].
Uh, hopefully there's crab in it.
If there's crab, it's gonna be worth it.
-If not, then -- -[man #1] I don't see why people --
[bleep] that guy.
[Jake speaks]
[man #1 speaks]
It's gonna really suck if they don't produce anything.
[man #2 singsong] Bairdi, bairdi, bairdi.
[normally] All right, here comes the pot.
Come on, come on.
[man #1] What do we got? What do we got?
Please tell me...
[man #1 speaks]
Holy [bleep].
On the Cornelia Marie.
[man #1] What do we got? What do we got?
[Jake] I got an offload. It's a hard out.
You gotta get to the delivery date exactly on time.
Please tell me there's bairdi.
[man #1 speaks]
Holy [bleep].
[men] Yeah!
[man #2] Whoo.
Oh, my God!
[Jake speaks]
Look at that thing!
[man #1] Money, money, money, baby.
[man #2 speaks]
[Jake] Oh, my God.
All right, we're pulling up on the second pot.
Let's see what we got.
[man #1] What have we got? What have we got?
Oh, [bleep]!
Oh, my God! Look at that pot!
-[men cheer] -[bleep]!
[man #1] There we go.
-[man #2] Yeah! -[man #3] Yeah, baby!
[men continue cheering]
[man #1] This is awesome.
[Jake] The last string that I sent over here was opies.
Look at all that bairdi.
I really didn't know how it was gonna pan out.
I knew there was crab, but I didn't know how much.
[men cheer]
You know, even though today's a tough day, we found them.
[man #1] 141, 141.
[Jake] Just in time.
I gotta offload tomorrow. We got 'em now.
I'm proud to be fishing the way Phil would fish and on
the same boat that he fished on.
He was always a person that picked me up
and helped me to realize that I was worth something.
Cornelia Marie's a legend, Phil Harris is a legend,
and I plan to do the same thing.
62 miles northwest.
Caught us some bairdi right now, just wanna get into this gear.
But I've got an exhaust leak.
Neal will fix it. Just fix the exhaust.
I don't know how many times in the last 34 years.
We'll do it. Whatever it takes, we'll do it.
So I found an old bicycle cable for locking up
bicycles, and a padlock, and a turnbuckle from
the life raft, an old turnbuckle.
Just turnbuckle the cable.
So you pulled the exhaust back together?
[Neal] Yeah, it's keeping it from shaking.
We'll have to have it welded.
I can't get it inside the stack while we're running.
-You're a genius. -It's like a MacGyver.
-MacGyver. -Temporary.
Temporary fix.
[Johnathan] Thank you, Neal.
OK, guys. First pot.
Neal fixed the exhaust.
But nothing's for sure out here.
Going home.
It's the final countdown, baby.
[Johnathan] It's the second string
that wraps around the whole mountain there.
Hopefully, they'll come up good.
If we're lucky, we'll load this boat, go to town quick,
bring home everyone safe. I'm not gonna say nothing.
I'm knocking on wood.
Whoo-hoo! Yeah!
-[men cheer] -Yeah!
[Stephen] That's a good pot, Russell.
[man #1] Whoo! Yeah!
[Johnathan] Whoo-hoo. Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo.
-Look at those monsters! -Whoo-hoo!
Back in the high life again, man.
-I guess. -[Johnathan speaks]
[Johnathan] That's like a $1,500 pot.
[optimistic music plays]
[men cheer]
We're knocking the [bleep] out of this [bleep].
[men continue cheering]
[man #1] Oh, bingo!
Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
[man #1] Big crab, man. We'll take it.
Now we're going home soon.
[men cheer]
Whoo-hoo-hoo.
Thank you, Lord above.
[man #1 speaks]
[Monte speaks]
You know, we're just kind of really just getting going on
this western bairdi fishery.
My brother set pots out of bounds.
Here's the closed area, very, very defined.
We certainly liked what came up right in the deepest point,
92 fathoms.
We moved a little bit into a legal area
in the same type of depth
and hopefully put together some sort of trip.
We got about probably close to 350,000 pounds to catch,
which is exactly what we're gonna do.