[narrator] Over a century ago, America was forever changed
by an industrial revolution.
A revolution that sparked bold innovations
and unprecedented wealth.
That spirit is alive and well in Nome, Alaska.
Spearheaded by Shawn Pomrenke.
Mr. Gold's gonna get some gold.
Who revolutionized offshore gold mining.
[Shawn] This is what it's all about.
There's millions in gold on the Bering Sea floor.
The trick is, how do you get it?
Here we go!
Most everyone in Noam goes diving from a suction dredge.
You send a diver down with a hose,
you pump up the material from the bottom,
and you filter out the gold.
But over a decade ago, I thought outside the box.
I think with that dredge set up the right way,
I'll be crushing the competition.
I put an excavator on a barge.
This thing is awesome.
I could mine deeper and faster and go through
way more material than any diver could ever do.
Yeah!
It was the first of its kind.
I called it the Christine Rose,
and it made me rich.
This is more money than some people make in a lifetime.
Two years ago, I stepped it up a notch.
I took over and redesigned the Myrtle Irene,
Yeah.
...the largest excavator dredge on the Bering Sea.
Ooh, Mr. Gold's doing its thing.
[narrator] Now, in a bid to launch the next golden empire,
the miners are unleashing a new wave of innovations,
We get gold, you gotta have bigger and better equipment.
[narrator] ushering in another industrial revolution.
[Kris] We're going to the next level.
I can feel the money that we're going to make.
My SeaCrawler's like a robot that replaces human divers.
Never gets tired, never complains,
and it will never stop getting gold.
We're going to get chunks of gold that big this year.
[Zeke] I've got the largest diver-operated suction dredge
in the whole world.
There's not a better gold dredge in Nome.
That means more volume through the sluice box
and more gold for me.
That's good money.
[Chris] I'm running the most advanced dredge in the fleet.
I've got hydraulics to move it quick.
We're like clockwork out here.
Position the hose.
Here we go, yeah!
And adjust the anchors.
I can set up to mine faster than anyone,
so I will be on the gold faster, too.
It's my time to shine.
[Emily] It's not just about what machine you have,
it's how you operate that machine.
Yeah!
-I'm overhauling my whole team. -You're a champion!
A crew that's like family is where the gold's gonna come from.
What?
-[shushes] -Sorry.
[baby cries]
[Vernon] Unmanned bottom crawlers are the way of the future.
That thing is a beauty.
Mine's gonna be like nothing else on the Bering Sea.
A lot of people around here call it the short bus.
It's gonna make me a fortune.
-That's a tasty pile of gold right there. -Yeah.
-[narrator] But every revolution has its battles -Damn it.
-Half of that's my [bleep] gold -[bleep] money.
[bleep] I'll see you in court.
And after this summer...
No one in the gold mining fleet has ever experienced
a storm like this.
-Nothing will ever be the same. - [siren wailing]
We're gonna have to evacuate.
[bleep] We're sinking!
I can lose every boat I own.
[woman speaking]
[siren wailing]
Oh, man!
-This thing could explode. -Get back!
Try to get us out, so let's move back.
This is crazy.
[Shawn] Everybody's screwed.
[narrator] Nome, Alaska.
Home of the richest offshore gold deposit in the world.
Every summer, once the ice melts on the Bering Sea,
miners descend on this small town,
Whoo!
diving or digging...
for fortune on ocean plots known as claims
that are leased by the state
and the stakes could not be higher...
[laughs]
...as just one single ounce of gold
can be worth over $2,000.
Raining, it's cold. Another beautiful day in Nome, Alaska.
[narrator] As summer mining begins, Nome's industrial giant
is looking to get rolling.
[Shawn] It's the start of the year, exciting, can't wait
to get this thing out there and dig up a bunch of gold.
[narrator] By putting the biggest weapon in his arsenal,
the Myrtle Irene, onto the Bering Sea.
Oh, she's coming up now.
Hooking up the shackle, hooking up the chain
to keep the boat from rolling away from us.
The Myrtle Irene's huge, way too heavy
to lift with a crane, so pulling her across airbags.
This is the only way we can get her in and out of the water each season.
Oh, yeah.
Looking really good.
It's a delicate process.
If it tumbles off, it could be hundreds
of thousands of dollars in repairs in a blink of an eye.
It's time to roll this thing in.
This is the most dangerous part of the whole project.
Slow and steady.
That's how we're gonna do it.
Right now, we're at the water's edge.
This is the most critical part.
Keep rolling. Almost there.
We're in the water!
Yeah! [laughs]
Nice job, guys.
I've been the top dog in Nome for years.
I always felt like I was in a different league than the rest of the fleet.
But now, with some recent advancements,
that gap is starting to narrow.
So this summer, I'm not messing around.
It's time to go put some gold in the box.
I want to get enough gold to keep me
ahead of the pack and bank me a big profit after expenses.
For the Pomeranki Empire, that number is 3,000 ounces,
which would be the most gold I've ever made in one season.
Got a lot of guys to feed around here.
We're going to be rolling, making money.
-Fire everything up. -Okay.
[generator powering up]
Hey, hey, hey.
[Shawn] We got problems.
Cracked spud.
-[bleeping] -Mm-hmm.
That one's cracked. This side's cracked.
Busted there, too.
We have to hit the ground running this summer,
and now we have a major, major issue.
We got cracks in our spuds.
The two steel columns that we lower into the Bering sea floor
to hold us in place while we're digging.
-It's like two 20-foot cracks. -That's a crack right there.
So this whole thing all the way around is cracked.
[bleep]
If they're cracked, especially this bad,
they could break off.
That could tear the bottom of the barge open and sink the Myrtle.
If we go dig on it, we'd be [bleep] we'd tear it in [bleep] half.
It's bad.
There's no quick fix to this.
The spud's got to come out.
We've got to pull it out, cut an inspection hole,
check out the internals of the spud.
But I don't have a good feeling about it.
We'll see how deep the damage goes.
If these cracks go all the way through
and simple welding won't fix it, we're screwed.
It's not like there's spuds sitting around the hardware store.
Getting replacements could take months.
All right.
This could be the end of it.
Until we open it up, we don't know.
It could be the end of the [bleep] Myrtle season before it even began.
[narrator] With Shawn on the ropes.
Summer mining, baby.
It's in full swing.
So far, so good. You know, I got an early start.
First one in the water, you know.
That's the rule of the game.
If you ain't first, you're last.
The stage is now set for a new Titan to create
a revolution of his own.
I crushed it this winter, and I came up with the best divers.
I mean, we made history, pretty much.
As the youngest captain in the fleet,
Chris McCulley made a splash this winter
when miners dive under the ice,
...breaking the bank with his gold hauls,
100, 200, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine...
We just tipped the scale.
And upsetting the balance of power by
besting Shawn in total ounces.
Things are looking pretty good.
Best day ever.
This summer, he's showing no signs of letting up.
This is a serious business, you know?
At the end of the day, this is our livelihood.
Can't mess around.
It's time to go dredging.
Oh, yeah.
This season, I'm determined to kill it
with the most advanced tech on the water.
And that's why I'm rolling with the Tahta.
This boat was a former shrimp boat.
It's got the hydraulics to move the hose, to pick up the jets.
I don't have to manually move that stuff,
so I can focus more on getting on the gold.
And the best thing about the Tahta,
it could be operated by one dial.
It could literally become a self-contained, gold-getting machine.
I am determined to get the most gold in my life
this summer.
Let's go.
Let's get the hell out of here.
We're about to make money right now.
It's amazing how nobody's out yet, you know?
Everybody's wrenching on their dredge, so I'm on it.
I'm on it, man.
I'm the first one.
You snooze, you lose, buddy.
Every day, this is what I look forward to,
to just go out in the ocean and get gold, man.
I think it's gonna be a good day.
Fire up that hydraulic anchor.
This is the good stuff, man.
I can already feel it. My adrenaline's kicking in.
Calm down, Chris. Calm down.
No.
We were on a pay streak, which I named Wall Street,
and that was really killer for us over the winter.
I want to be one step ahead of everyone,
so we've been out here for a few days,
and we have located a great spot.
For my crew this year, I have hired a beast.
His name's Camp as well as my deckhand Bobby.
All righty.
Good to go.
We're both diving today, and I'm setting a lofty goal
for this summer.
300 ounces, which will be the career best for me.
I'm sure Mr. Gold will beat that in a heartbeat with his empire.
With all his expenses, if I hit that, I would make way more money.
Ready to go. Get money, buddy.
Can you hear me?
Let me know when you're ready.
[whirring]
Dredging for gold's really pretty crazy.
We go down like 30, 35 feet.
The diver has to move the suction hose
along the seafloor and look for traces of gold.
That material goes up to my sluice box
to get the gold.
How's it going?
Right on, right on.
[Chris] The diver has to communicate via topside com box.
-All right. -There's a lot of danger dredging for gold.
Getting tangled, getting water in the mass
and losing air, so that line of communication
is very crucial for us.
So what are you seeing down there so far?
[Chris over radio] Yeah, baby.
We're on it.
Just suck it up.
We are the first one on the water, and we are on gold already today.
This is literally how it's done.
Whoo!
We're back in business.
[narrator] A new industrial revolution
is blossoming throughout Nome.
And in the harbor...
An 18-inch bottom crawler, and this son of a bitch
has got a massive barrel and nozzle.
[narrator] A veteran skipper's jumping into the fray.
[Vernon] May have the bones for first-class operation.
It just needs a modification.
[narrator] No one in the fleet has seen more ups...
That's our best clean out yet.
...and downs than Vernon Adkison.
What do you mean I don't know what I'm [bleep] doing?
For years, the captain struggled.
I don't see any cobbles. [bleep]
[narrator] But three seasons ago, he set out on
his custom-built gold ship Wild Ranger.
This boat will handle it all.
Now that's full speed ahead all summer.
And hit it big, gambling everything he had,
buying claim 56.
I can work 56 for the rest of the time I'm on this planet.
[narrator] But this past winter, a health scare slowed him down.
My heart's [bleep] up again, [bleep] damn it.
[narrator] Now he's rested up and ready to join the revolution.
This friend of mine has offered this rig
for a pretty damn good price.
So I'll probably get you to go out there with me
and we'll eyeball it.
That sounds great.
The Gold Ship has served me well, but I need to up my production
and keep up with the rest of the pack.
That's why I've got my eye on a remote crawler system.
This way I can operate an unmanned crawler
on the ocean floor and gobble up the ground a lot more efficiently
and increase profits without having any divers.
Let's go take a look at that dredge.
But the vessel, the crawler is gonna launch from
is a bit unconventional.
So there it is right there.
The housing is innovative.
The little school bus, that wouldn't have been my first choice,
but I guess it works.
We're here.
So the dredge was built from a school bus.
I've never seen anything like it.
You've got to build with what you've got in Nome,
and well, that's what the guy had.
Even the name of the dredge is crazy.
It's called the X Wife.
I've had a few of those in the past,
and hopefully it doesn't drain all your money, too.
This is quite the rig.
It looks like the main pump engine over there.
Let's take a look at it.
I'm just eyeballing the entire rig.
I just want to see what kind of equipment is on here
and just get an idea of where, whether or not
I think it's gonna work.
This is a nice engine right, right here.
it looks damn near brand-new.
[engine starts]
Got a huge toolbox and all these tools go with it.
This engine right here, this is a Deutz.
It's an air-cooled 100 horsepower diesel engine.
I mean that thing it's just a beauty.
It comes equipped with a toilet, which...
that's a nice feature out here.
It's kind of small, might be a special event type thing.
This is the crawler right here.
It's on tracks.
You lower it on the bottom, control it remotely from the surface.
This rig needs work, and a lot of it.
It'll probably take all summer to just get ready
to launch the crawler.
It's basically just bones and some good parts right now.
But I can see for a low cost, it can help me make big money.
This thing has got lights, the lights flash,
the little stop sign still works.
And it's a school bus.
I mean, how cool would it be to turn that into one of
the best rigs in the fleet?
-[siren beeps] -That works.
-Bells and whistles. -[siren beeps]
Well, I tell you, Nate, I'm very interested.
I'd like a little bit of time to think about it.
I'm flying out tomorrow.
If you don't get it today, you don't get it at all.
It's going back on the shore.
Ah.
Prices are going up if I got to pull it out of the water and winterize it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, so once you put it ashore and winterize it,
then the price of our deal that we talked about
is not going to still be on the table.
No.
Ah, [bleep]
Well, I hadn't really planned on it, but okay.
All right, sold.
That's just what I needed, another dredge.
I'm definitely stretching myself thin this year.
To properly outfit the X-Wife, so that we can launch
the crawler and then also fund the Gold Ship,
we're going to have to go for 250 ounces this summer.
That would be the most I've ever brought in.
Let me just sit down here.
Oh, yeah.
This chair seems like it was designed for my ass.
Pretty sweet.
This...
-is the future of mining. -[man] Oh, yeah.
I'm getting pretty excited about this [bleep]
and not much excites me these days.
[Kris] It's mining season. We're going to check out
my small Empire that keeps getting bigger
every [bleep] time I turn around.
[narrator] Often seen as the pirates of the fleet.
We're going to war it looks like.
Battle stations!
No one has had more ambitious plans than Kris Kelly.
Go big or go broke, it's one of those two.
And not coincidentally, no one has seen their plans
fall to pieces more than Kris Kelly.
[Kris] This is the worst idea I've ever had.
Something's [bleep] wrong.
It's [bleep]
We're going home in utter defeat.
[narrator] After investing in an excavator dredge to rival Shawn last summer.
[Kris] My own excavation barge.
It's nuts. We're big time now.
That sound right there is money.
[narrator] And unleashing a state-of-the-art underwater crawler
-this winter. - [Kris] Watching this crawler work
is a dream come true.
This thing hogs, dude.
[narrator] Kris is climbing the industrial ladder yet again
by adding a new mammoth tentacle to the Reaper Nation.
[Kris] I've got this boat docked right now.
It's called the All In.
I'm going to use that boat to launch my crawler,
and that is my priority to make sure that runs.
Last year I realized I don't want to be a regular captain anymore.
I want to be a captain of industry.
That's why I got the crawler.
It took all winter to get it working,
but it's clear this is going to make us rich.
I just needed a boat big enough to launch it on the open water.
That's why we came up with the All In.
I know it's going to be the perfect boat for that system.
Emphasis on will be.
Right now, it looks like something out of Mad Max.
Maybe I should make sure one operation is working
and making money before I start another operation,
but that's not me, you know?
Like, chaos is [bleep] in my blood.
The All In, it's a war horse.
It hasn't been on the water in a couple years,
so I've been working to get it outfitted to launch my crawler.
Problem is, I'm behind schedule.
I thought it would be ready right now,
but I need more time and I need more money,
so I have to break the bad news to my investor, Kevin.
And I need Kevin to be excited about the operation,
which might be tricky,
considering how last summer went.
[Kevin] What the hell is this, Kris?
I'm starting to worry here. Is that thing gonna even float?
[Kris] My boat's dead in the water.
This has been a [bleep] disaster.
That's, like, two or three ounces.
We need a lot more gold.
We might have to start selling stuff off to be able to make ends meet.
-[Kevin] So this is it, huh? Looks like Frankenstein. -Yeah.
[Kris] You got to really see it.
We'll go for the tour. Okay.
[Kevin] Yeah, I want to go for a tour.
-Don't fall. -I'll try not to fall.
You got insurance, right?
[bleep] you, you know what?
My insurance is that ditch over there.
You [bleep] get hurt.
We put you in the ditch.
-I better not get hurt. -Hey, look,
before you go in there, um, should I take a tetanus shot?
No, no. No, look, it's a million times better
than it was, but it's still disgusting.
-So, you know, like, I know you're... -Okay.
-okay, just chill out, okay? -Let's see what we got.
Let's see how disgusting this is.
It's [bleep] disgusting.
[Kris] So this is the vision, the arcade room.
-I like the controls. -My brother's just sitting here,
drinking his coffee, getting fatter by the second, making gold.
You just stand here, monitor's here,
you know, monitor's here, and you just stand here,
and you [bleep] around with it all day long.
The screens. That's it.
If I had the money right now, it would be in the water in seven days.
Yeah, seven days, because I need to order
a few things, and I ran out of money.
And that's the truth of it.
You know, I need to go make my Mistress work.
We get that running, we put in a little bit of money into this,
and there's a really good chance I'll get more gold on this boat
than I will on the Mistress.
I'm behind schedule, but I convinced Kevin everything's good,
and the boat should be ready in seven days.
While that's being done, I gotta get my excavator barge,
the Mistress, on the water as soon as I can to start making gold.
Then eventually we'll have this whole empire working
at full strength.
I'm aiming for 1,000 ounces this year,
and I've never even got anything close to that before.
But with everything I got right now,
I'm gonna make that happen.
We're gonna go to a depth where nobody can dive at.
I think I'm gonna get chunks of gold that big this year.
-Wow. -Big chunks.
I'm excited.
-Big [bleep] -You know, I need a nice new chain.
-Dude. -You know what I mean? I mean, come on.
Could you imagine the Slick Rick chain, big [bleep] 5-ounce chain.
Go call me Slick Kris.
-Slick Kris, the ruler. -[Kris] The ruler.
This is my dream.
[narrator] On the outskirts of Nome.
I'm at like probably the apex of my working career,
like where I'm at physically and, like, confidence-wise.
I'm not gonna get any better than I am now.
[narrator] The mad scientist of the fleet, Zeke Tenhoff
has always been on the forefront of innovation.
[Zeke] To be our first time running two solutions at the same time,
so we're gonna have to double the goal today.
Anchor up!
[narrator] From a sailboat dredge...
-[Zeke] Dude, this is really fast. -Yeah.
...to a fully furnished mining shed on skis.
[Zeke] Everything's gonna be inside, we're gonna have a big wood burning stove,
all our gear, all our tools, it's gonna be sick.
[narrator] But this season, he's reaching an entirely new
and gigantic level of innovation.
An opportunity came my way to take over operations
of the custom-made suction dredge.
Equipment wise, there's not a better gold dredge in Nome.
[Zeke] I'm going out on a limb this summer with
the most ambitious move of my mining career.
I've made a huge investment in the Synergy.
It's the largest diver-operated suction dredge in the world.
It has a 14-inch hose.
It's by far the largest in the fleet.
I'll be able to dredge more ground than anyone.
It puts me in a whole new league, and it should help
my gold production just explode.
I'm taking on a half-a-million-dollar gamble,
and if I can't make it work,
it's gonna totally wipe me out.
The arrangement that I ended up making was that I will pay
a $100,000 down payment for the boat,
which cleaned out all my savings
and everything I had, and I had to borrow a little bit from my family
just to make it happen.
And I have to come up with another $100,000 payment
by sometime in September.
It's an opportunity to gamble on my ability
to make it pay and make it work.
And so if I can't make this boat pay, I think I might just, like,
quit and just go watch plants grow somewhere.
The boat looks good.
What a contraption, huh?
This dredge is a 14-inch suction dredge.
Every two inches that you go up in the diameter of a circle
of a hose, it doubles the amount of water
that goes into that circle of a hose.
So that would make this, like, 16 6-inch dredges at once.
You can probably process more yardage per hour
than the Christine Rose can.
I need to make that $100,000 boat payment
by September or I lose the boat
and my down payment.
So I have to crack 55 ounces by September,
which is a pretty lofty number if things don't go right.
It's a big challenge.
There's a lot that I'm still figuring out.
To be able to accomplish that with a new boat
that's very complex and has a steep learning curve,
it's a really ambitious goal that I've set for myself.
So I'm bringing in a ringer.
Good morning, bud.
I'm super stoked.
Jeff Orzechowski is going to join my team.
He's one of the best divers in Nome.
And luckily for me, he had a falling out
working with Jane and Emily this past winter.
[Jane] That's the agreement.
All right, [bleep] you.
Jeff has also worked on the Synergy in years past,
so it's critical that he's on board to help show me how to run it.
First trip out. Good to go.
Here we go.
-[Jeff] Yeah! -[Zeke laughs]
Harbormaster, this is Synergy.
I'm rounding the jetty right now.
So we're right here. We're 40 feet from that cut.
-Yeah, we can pull all the way up into here. -Yeah.
[Zeke] Shawn Pomrenke owns the richest claim in Nome, Tomcod.
I made a deal with him last year to mine on it
and pay him a royalty.
He's renewed that deal again with me this summer.
And it's sweet, because not only is Tomcod loaded with gold,
it's perfect ground for the Synergy.
With this boat, we need to do our best to locate
and target cobble that's under a bunch of sand,
because that's what this boat excels at.
Little dredges, like 10-inch dredges,
they're not ever going to target gold
that's under a bunch of sand, because it will take them too long.
They can't make it pay.
So that's what's cool about this.
It's like all of a sudden, this is all virgin ground.
I'm going to go ahead and throw the anchor down right about here.
Oh, yeah!
We lit the hose up and then we basically use the gantry
to lower everything into the water.
[Zeke] Everything is supersized on this dredge and nothing is simple.
This is the biggest suction hose on the Bering Sea
when it's full of material.
It weighs well over a thousand pounds.
We have to use a crane just to get it off the side of the boat
and into the water.
[Jeff] There we go.
[Zeke] All right, perfect.
If I can figure all this out, this season is gonna be bomb.
I think we're ready to do some diving.
Jeff's gonna go down first while I stay up top
and try to get comfortable with all the systems.
It's a really steep learning curve on this boat,
and I need to pick it up fast.
Real touch down.
You should have suction.
[Jeff] [bleep] yeah.
Oh, yeah.
[whoops]
[whoops] Good start.
Cam, do you copy?
Yo, he can't speak, you know what I mean,
he can't speak while he works,
his brain doesn't work that way. [laughs]
[narrator] The captain may be getting the silent treatment,
but diver Cameron Stiles is letting the gold do the talking.
It's been an hour and a half, so far so good,
he's on the gold, it's all that matters, smooth as a whistle.
What?
[Chris] Yeah, damn it, well, [bleep]
[bleep]
The nozzle came out.
[bleep]
This is pretty messed up.
The nozzle's welded onto the hose, and it came off.
To put it in simple terms, we can't mine without a nozzle.
We are dead in the water.
[Chris] We'll get changed, and then we'll pick up the gear,
and then head on back to the town.
I'm gonna start to come down on it.
Pick up the nozzle,
Pull it up, watch it,
back it up, back it up, almost there.
There we go, that's [bleep]
I can't really fix this out here, and this may sound crazy,
but I think it's early enough to bring the nozzle back
to town, get it welded back to the hose,
and we can get back out here and do some more mining.
I'm not messing around this summer.
I don't want nothing to stop me.
Let's give it a look, see if we got anything.
Oh, yeah, look at that.
Yeah, buddy.
Hell yeah.
See, within an hour, and I start seeing pieces like that,
that means that's [bleep] badass.
So I'm pretty happy that we're back on the gold, man.
That's cool.
This is what I'm chasing down for.
Yeah, woo!
God bless us.
All right, let's get out of here.
Head back to town.
[narrator] On the Bering Sea.
[Vernon] First time out, feels good to be underway.
Little breeze in the teeth, you know,
strong breeze up the nose, makes you feel nautical.
[narrator] The Salty Skipper has set sail, intent on paying
for his newest technological toy and beyond.
[Vernon] Every summer is different.
I always pick a high number because I always set
my aim high and that's why I'm constantly continuously
disappointed in life.
This season just started and I'm already behind the eight ball.
I got to pay for the X Wife.
In this case of course, I'm referring to the school bus dredge I just bought.
It needs a lot of work, so I got to get the gold
to pay for it or I'm going to take a bath this season.
I mean the secret to happiness is having low expectations.
But I think this summer is gonna be a good one.
We're in position, drop the anchor.
Right there that flag is marked as easy gold.
We've got some really beautiful gold there
right on top of the clay.
Hey, guys, come up here for a minute.
There's easy gold right there.
Some seasons, you can have the pick of the litter
when it comes to cruise.
Some seasons you can't.
And this year, we're falling into the latter category.
Here in a few minutes, we'll drop the camera and look.
Scott was with me last winter, but this is the first time
he's been with me in the summer.
Hey, Kevin.
Pull up the slack on the stern anchor
and make it fast.
Kevin's an old-time river miner,
but not a Bering Sea guy.
He's gonna be my tender.
Hopefully we can teach an old dog new tricks.
I said pull up the slack and make it fast.
And then there's Emil.
He's a Russian.
He does not speak a word of English.
He's going to help out topside and maybe dive at some point,
but the language barrier is going to make things challenging.
The crew is rough around the edges,
but, hell, they could prove to be a jackpot
compared to some crews I've had.
All right, let's now look at the camera.
Yeah, drop that down.
Yeah, yeah. That's better.
That looks like damn good cobble to me.
Probably five or six feet of visibility.
That's plenty.
Yeah, hell yeah.
We're on really good ground right now.
Yeah, it'll work.
Scott's going to take the first dive.
Today will be a good chance for me to see if this team
is going to cut it or not.
Kevin, how are you attaching that?
No, no, the [bleep] damn.
I, look, that has to be so that he can get to it.
-He, he put the vest on before. -I don't give a [bleep].
I want the damn thing so that they can reach right there and grab it.
Oh, [bleep], no, [bleep] damn it, don't do that again.
There's a possibility this could be a really long season.
Okay, here he goes.
All right, we have a touchdown.
[Vernon] So far, it's looking pretty good.
So far, so good, but we got to make some gold.
Suck it up, put it in that box.
[narrator] Back in town.
I'm trying to build this empire with chewing gum
and duct tape.
[narrator] The Reaper Nation captain readies to launch
his massive excavator dredge and begin the dawning
of a new empire.
[Kris] If I'm lucky, the Mistress will pay for everything.
As soon as I make some money on the Mistress,
my crawler gets in the water.
Everything is going to work out.
So the plan is simple.
Get the Mistress in the water making gold
as soon as I can, so I can pay for the All In,
so I can also get the crawler going. See? Simple.
Okay, first day of mining.
Everybody's here doing the prep work.
Bow lines are cast off. We're almost ready to go.
We make this thing sing, and then we get gold.
-I'm watching. -Well, you watch. You know, you watch.
Take notes. Take a picture.
Today, we have Hank Schimschat, a mining guru.
There she is!
I see the gold from here.
Hank worked for years on an excavator barge called the AU Grabber.
Yeah, baby.
And the Mistress was built from all of the parts
from the AU Grabber.
That's what I'm talking about right there.
[Hank] The old girl's changed a little bit.
You're gonna be very surprised about
how amazing this operation is.
Hank's in town for a couple days, and he wants to see
the Mistress in action.
It's always great to have a pro like Hank on board.
Plus, I want to show off the Mistress.
-[Kris] Okay, let's go. -[Hank] Let's do it.
Heads up. Ready to rock and roll.
Let's go!
[Kris] We're going where the gold is.
[Hank] We're ready to go mining, baby.
[Kris] Time to make that money.
It's a great day.
[narrator] Throughout Nome, an industrial revolution
is in full swing.
To get gold, you got to have bigger and better equipment.
Equipment-wise, there's not a better gold dredge in Nome.
I can feel the money that we're going to make.
We're going to the next level. Woo!
But in the harbor...
[Shawn] We just need to get this thing up and running.
Shawn Pomrenke is still stuck in neutral.
Got to get this spud out of here, so we can get it welded up
and get to mining.
It's [bleep]
Flat, calm out, perfect weather to be mining.
And here we are working on this [bleep] piece of [bleep].
Trying to repair a spud of this size is no joke.
Just getting the spud out so you can look at the damage
takes heavy duty equipment and skill.
Go for it.
Trying to get that cable hooked to the crane.
The problem is, it's 60 feet up in the air.
Getting close.
Yeah!
Let her rip.
Spud's out.
Probably going to put it over in our yard over here.
Once we get the spud out, we have to get it away
from the dock, so we're not in anybody's way.
Now we got to cut the spud open, assess how bad
the cracks are, and hopefully salvage the spud.
How's it going, Chuck?
-Oh, sorry. Yeah. -You're good.
It's gonna take some time to get to the bottom of this
and figure out how long it's gonna take to fix it,
assuming we can.
Time's not a luxury I have, not with the goal I've set.
All's I can hope is I'll be back to mining this season.
-Well, it's a project. -It is.
Job security. It's a [bleep] Myrtle.
Yeah.
This spud being broke like this is costing me
hundreds of thousands of dollars right now.
It's not good.
It sucks.
I do not need this [bleep].
[narrator] On the other side of the harbor...
-Here we go. -[Chris] Oh, yeah.
She ain't going nowhere now.
All right, let's load up, and then let's go.
[narrator] A nozzle may have broken off.
[Chris] Okay, let's set it back on the deck.
[narrator] But it never broke Chris McCully's determination to keep mining.
We're all loaded up.
We got our nozzle welded back together,
and we're ready to go, baby. Let's go make some money.
Let's go.
Whoo!
This is it.
It was a quick fix.
Now it's just game time from here.
I'm running on a full crew right now,
and I'm pretty confident.
Now that we're all fixed up, guess what?
There's more sun left.
So I'm not gonna waste my time.
I'm gonna go back down to the Wall Street,
put in some serious hours, and get some more gold.
Not gonna let up.
Thank God, it's a beautiful day.
I would've been so pissed if it just started picking up right now.
Did all that work just for it to pick up.
Because I try, I try. I never give up.
Perseverance is the key.
We're approaching our buoy spot,
so I'm going to get ready to anchor up.
Okay, here we go, boys.
I love this crane.
Got it going just like that, dude.
All right, get her tight as much as you can.
That's it.
Time is gold, so I ain't going to waste no time.
Let's get suited up.
My favorite part, getting into my wetsuit,
channeling my energy
because when I'm down there, I'm on it like a dog.
No stopping.
It's gold time.
Okay, I got through to the bottom.
All right, let's see what we got here.
Idle up.
Wow. [chuckles]
Definitely is going to pay out.
[Vernon] I'll take a vodka with some lime.
[narrator] And now, another episode of Social Hour with Vernon.
Let me see what the latest news is on the chat sites.
@CanTakeItWithYou, [reads tweet]
Whoo, boy.
Well...
I did have a bit of a heart problem.
I got to go sit down. [bleep]
My heart's [bleep] up again.
So it's like my heart went over speed
and beat erratically.
[bleep] damn it.
It's beating 94, and then it pops up to 165,
and then back to 94.
And they had to go in, like, cauterize around these ventricles
to keep my heart from going into atrial fibrillation.
Yeah.
I need to talk to a [bleep] heart doctor is what I need to do.
What's it called again?
Atrial fibrillation.
You're asking me to say that because you know
I can't pronounce fibrillation.
What the [bleep]?
I've been practicing, but I still can't say it right.
Fibrillation.
I mean...
I'm really surprised that I'm still [bleep] alive.
The whole damn thing might explode tomorrow.
And if it does, well, all I can say is IRS [bleep]
This has been another episode of Social Hour with Vernon.
No, I did not die. I'm still here.
And hopefully going to be kicking ass for a while.
[narrator] On the Bering Sea...
-Motion's flat. We're ready to make some money. -We're gonna get rich.
Yeah.
Reaper Nation is ready to get digging.
It's our first day of operation.
We're all excited on the boat.
The waters are calm, it's a beautiful day to dig,
and, uh, you know, now it's time to go out there and make some money.
When you see this thing run, you're gonna be happy with me.
Oh, good, good.
[Kris] So we kind of lucked out. The Mistress is grandfathered in,
and we're able to work on Tomcod.
Last summer I mined there, and it caused a little bit of friction between me
and Shawn.
You [bleep] come and jump on us, you stupid--
You're all [bleep] liars!
Read it! You're the [bleep] idiot!
You [bleep] idiot!
[Kris] Come on, Andy, get in there and rush him!
[bleep]
[Kris] Shawn and I called a truce, and we're just trying
to stay out of each other's way, which is easy.
Tomcod's over a thousand acres, and we've got a lot of spots marked that
aren't even close to Shawn.
Hey, take your backpack off. You're not going anywhere.
You're here to stay.
Our operator, James, quit at the end of last summer.
Screw him.
So I got a new operator today, Cameron.
She's got tons of excavator experience
on land, nothing on the water.
but she comes highly recommended, and I think she's gonna get it.
Hey, rocket seems late!
Dropping.
My spuds are down. Let's start this [bleep] up.
[generator whirring]
Boom, baby! Look at this.
Yeah, we're ready to dig.
I'm excited, it feels good to be out here.
You know, it's always nerve racking
going on a new job and I'm out on the Bering Sea for this job.
So, you know, a lot of emotions.
I'm starting up the excavator.
All systems are go.
I'm ready to get this summer of revolution going.
All that has to happen now is for Cameron to load up the gold.
We'll fund the upgrades and we'll get the crawler
in the water in a matter of days.
It's showtime, baby!
[Kris] Good luck!
I don't know why we're going so slow right now.
All right, so I'm just getting used to moving these controls here.
No, she's not okay.
She's not moving any [bleep] material.
That's starving.
This isn't bring your kid to work day.
Watching Cameron on the excavator.
The time it takes to do scoops is almost two minutes.
So a real person should have been able
to do three scoops at least in that same time.
Holy [bleep]
[exclaims]
She dropped a big-ass rock on the deck.
It's dangerous.
[bleep]
She's a little rough around the edges, you know what I mean?
I don't feel confident doing this.
See that [bleep]? All that gold went right back in the ocean.
She doesn't know what the [bleep] she's doing.
She needs to get the [bleep] out of that excavator.
From now on, I want grizzly, dirty, bearded [bleep] running this.
Basically, Cameron was a disaster.
She has no business running this excavator.
I need to hit the ground running and I'm never going to get anywhere with her.
So I'm going to have to tell her the truth.
This isn't gonna work out.
We need about 45 second cycle time
-Yup. -and we need, like, at least half a bucket per scoop.
-Yeah. -We need yardage to run through this,
so I'm sorry to say you're stuck here all day.
We're out here, and I can't waste one minute.
It's time to go to plan B.
Come on Hank, jump in that excavator for me.
Thank God Hank is here right now.
He's agreed to jump in that chair and save my ass
at least for today until I find somebody new.
Whoo! Let's get some gold!
That's an operator right there.
First test pan of the day, this is gonna be a good one.
Tons of A.B. I'm in a better mood.
We're getting gold. Everything's fine.
Is that a couple feet out on this turn you want?
The first day on the water, the Tenhoff team is already moving and shaking
with their new high-tech dredge, the Synergy.
Three feet to starboard, coming up.
[Zeke] The suction hose on this dredge is huge and powerful.
It's too heavy for the diver to move on his own,
and it can get away from you in a hurry.
So each time he wants to move, we have to carefully
reposition the dredge.
The Synergy has three anchors, and every time
the diver wants to move, I have to carefully reposition the anchor lines
to get the boat on top of where he wants to go.
In on the port, five feet.
The way this boat is set up, the tender is a really active job.
And you need to readjust the anchors for Jeff.
And you're just getting up and getting down,
and getting up and getting down.
Out of the stern, in on the port.
Starboard, three feet.
Out of the stern, 15 feet.
Oh, [bleep]
You're [bleep] bossy, dude.
[grumbling]
He just always [bleep] yell.
Yeah, once on my umbilical.
Oh, my God.
What, you want to loop in on your umbilical?
I'm super grateful to have Jeff on my crew.
He's one of the best divers in Nome,
and he knows this boat in and out.
But dang, Jeff is really high strung, and he's bossy.
It's not the kind of vibe that I'm trying
to maintain in my working environment.
I think that, like, with all those years
he spent in the military, he got really used
to, like, superiors yelling at him.
I think that's how it goes.
He's just like, dude do that, do this,
do that, do that, and so like now in this environment,
he's able to like do that to people around him.
Keeps you so busy, you don't even have time
to peel the whole cucumber before Jeff needs you to do, like, five different things.
If Jeff could stop barking out his orders
for even just a few minutes then
I would have time to enjoy one of my favorite things
about this boat.
It's deluxe kitchen.
[narrator] Welcome y'all to Zeke's Tasty Home Cooking.
[Zeke] We need to get our cooking game on.
[narrator] The premier destination for maritime munchies.
I don't want to lose any of the precious vegetables.
[narrator] Why there's veggie hash, baked chicken,
roasted sausage, herby dumplings, and of course
the house specialty, leafy greens.
'Cause I hate it when you go to a restaurant
and put a handful of leaves on your plate and call it a salad.
That's not a salad.
So next time you find yourself on the Bering Sea,
make sure to stop by and cure your cravings.
You hear?
Okay, I'm done.
[Zeke speaking]
Okay, sounds good.
The plan was for me to take over for the next dive,
but with these swells kicking up like this,
I think we're gonna have to pull up the hose.
But it's still a good start.
The amount of ground that he moved in a few hours
is more than most dredgers are able to move in days.
So we'll both hit it together next time
when the weather isn't so rough.
[Jeff] Check it out, bud.
Yeah, I mean, we're in it, dude.
Yeah, it's all packed up in here.
Coarse pieces piling up.
All right. Yeah. [laughs]
[Zeke] Yeah, I think you had me moved, like, 150 times.
-I could tell you were kidding. -Like, what the [bleep], dude?
[narrator] Throughout Nome, the captains are capitalizing
on new technology.
And out on claim 56...
[Vernon] What's up, Scott?
[narrator] It may only be the first dive of the season,
but so far Vernon Adkison's ragtag crew is holding their own.
[Vernon] The old gold ship's running real good today.
I'm really pleased with how smoothly things have been going today.
Look, the jury is still out, but these guys seem to be confident so far
and got some gold, which is a good sign.
He's seeing gold.
He's been down there about two and a half hours.
Check his chest, mat, to see if he's actually getting any gold.
The thing is, I've done this long enough
to know that sometimes you think the gold is just killer,
but it's just small stuff.
Yanking your chain, so to speak.
So we're going to do a test pan to make sure
we're not wasting our time.
Kevin's panning it out right now.
And we'll know here in a minute.
You know, that's a couple of grams.
That's for a couple of hours right there.
It's not bad, but it's not good.
It's not what I'm looking for.
Scott, Scott, we're definitely getting gold, but, um...
it could be a lot better.
I'd say it's looking moderate.
Moderate.
Moderate is not going to pay for that crawler.
We need the big stuff.
We need super gold.
So Scott's got to move around and find some better gold.
I think we better do some prospecting.
Seeing some gold down there, but he's not knocking it out
of the ballpark right now.
It needs to be better.
So I want him to just prospect until he gets on something,
something good.
What, what's up, Scott?
-So... -[indistinct conversation]
...you're coming in real muffled.
I can't hardly hear you.
Ah, [bleep]
Scott, I cannot, something has happened.
You're coming in very muffled.
Cannot hear you. Cannot hear you.
[faintly] Paddle up and down, up and down.
I cannot hear you, Scott.
[indistinct chatter]
Paddle up and down, up and down.
All right.
But what the [bleep]? I can't... Talk to him.
I can't [bleep] hear him.
Come back on that. I was away from the radio.
[bleep] damn it.
Bad comms, bad comms.
Yo, Scott, come up.
Ah, [bleep].
Pull him up.
Yo, pull him up.
Sometimes it's just the smallest little thing
that'll shut you down.
Things were going well, but something went wrong
with the comm system.
You can't communicate with the diver.
You've got to get him up.
It's just not safe.
It's frustrating as hell, but that's that.
That's for two and a half hours.
Yep.
We'll hit it hot and heavy all day tomorrow.
That's all she wrote. We're heading back in.
It's dinner time. [laughs]
They did damn good.
Damn good.
So far their grade is incomplete, but I do see some promise
with this team.
The comms weren't their fault.
They got on gold, and they didn't sink the boat or anything.
We'll hit it tomorrow.
We'll get on some really good gold, and we'll put some gold in that sluice box.
We're going to need it to pay for that crawler,
but I'm cautiously optimistic.
Overall, I'd say it was a great day.
I started, basically, a brand new crew.
To take them out there and have them perform
as well as they did, I think it's pretty damn spectacular.
It gives me hope for the season.
[narrator] Back in the harbor.
Dude, it's [bleep] good.
I really like how gold pops with light blue.
Nobody really understands why.
[narrator] The Tenhoff crew has wrapped up on the Tomcod claim,
and it's time to see if they're feeling Synergy
with their new top-of-the-line dredge.
We want to just get this cleaned up, see where we're at.
I feel like a little kid on Christmas morning.
We only had a six-hour day, but we moved a ton of material,
and I can't wait to see what that poor Tina Jones is able to pull in.
I'm so excited that we're just going to weigh this out in the parking lot.
[Zeke] Let's weigh out this gold. See what we've got.
One ounce.
Three ounces.
It's got to be more than that.
-9.3. -We can live with that.
[all chuckling]
[narrator] 9.3 ounces is worth over $17,000.
And Nome's industrial revolution may well create
a revolution in Zeke's bank account.
[Jeff] That's a solid clean out for one day of diving.
-[Zeke] I'm happy with it. -That's [bleep]
Nothing about me is not stoked about at all.
I really went outside my comfort zone
this summer and really overextended my budget in taking over the Synergy.
But this boat is sick.
Technology-wise, it's better than anything I've ever mined on before.
And this clean out is telling me that I made
the right gamble for sure.
[Jeff] We're about to fill this up by the end of the summer.
-Yeah. -Because we are winning.
[Zeke] Yeah.
That's good money. I'll take it.
Hank's doing a good job and he's making us gold.
Look at that bucket, Kris.
Everything's good.
[narrator] With veteran operator Hank Schimschat in the chair,
Reaper Nation may be on its way to becoming
an industrial mining giant.
Scoops look great. We're getting a lot of material.
We're getting the right kind of material, so everything's good.
Hank is pitch-hitting in the chair,
and he's absolutely hitting it out of the park.
It's amazing to see everything working properly.
It's like an out-of-body experience.
We're making money, baby!
I really am happy.
Good job, guys.
[Kris] The bucket looks so good. That's the way I like it.
Our box is loading up with material real weird,
I don't know what's wrong, really.
So we're not supposed to be getting rocks this size
running through our sluice box.
So, I'm gonna shut it down. See what's going on.
The good news is we're processing tons of material.
Hank is crushing it.
But the wash plant in the sluice box
should be filtering out the big stuff.
We shouldn't be seeing rocks piling up.
That's what's happening.
So just in case you're wondering
this is what getting [bleep] looks like.
Look at all those big [bleep] rocks.
That's my problem right [bleep] there.
For some reason, somewhere in the system, the big rocks
are not being filtered out.
Too much materials going through the box,
it's causing the box to back up and I think
we're losing gold because of it.
Most of it is just being dumped back into the Bering Sea,
and I [bleep] hate catch and release.
We are literally flushing money away.
No matter what, you should not be seeing rocks
this size run through your sluice box.
The only reason you would have rocks going through
your sluice box this size,
if you're getting chunks of gold this size,
and you don't want to kick them out.
Problem is, I'm not [bleep] getting any chunks of gold like this.
90% of my gold is superfine.
So, you know, like, this [bleep] is not helping me out.
It's garbage, costing me money, and I'm losing fuel.
Oh, [bleep].
These [bleep] screens are too big on the bottom.
They're not quarter-inch.
That's a big problem right there.
We should be using this, because we never see gold
-big enough to fit through here. -For sure, 100%.
We did some repairs and some upgrades
to the Mistress a couple weeks ago to get it ready
for summer.
Someone put in the wrong screens in the wash plant.
They're too wide, so it's not screening out
the bigger rock material, and we're not getting enough gold.
We need to fix this before we keep going.
It's not the end of the world, we just need to get the right screen,
but that means going back into town, losing time
and not making gold.
We're not making gold, I can't pay for the All In
and we can't make the crawler work.
So right now is a domino effect that I can't afford right now.
We're gonna have to take it back in
and we're gonna put all brand-new screening in
and there's nothing we can do about it.
I don't want to go home either, but this is better
-than wasting gas. -Yeah.
Let's pack up and go home.
What a [bleep] waste of a day.
[Chris speaking]
[narrator] Despite the building swells,
Chris McCully is pushing ahead.
It's frickin' pretty wet up here.
Oh, [bleep].
Maybe it's frickin' time for us to get out of here,
frickin' fillin' my boots up with water.
You're getting wet now.
You think we should just pull Chris up now?
I don't know either. It's my first year on this boat.
I'd say it's getting worse.
I think we should just pull Chris up now, maybe toggle him down.
Yeah.
Chris, you got a copy?
Weather's really picking up now.
A couple of bigger boats than us already headed back into town.
Thinking it's probably time to call it, Chris.
If you could hear me.
[Chris] Woo!
Hey, Chris, you copy?
[Chris speaking]
It looks like he's making his way back up.
All right, yeah, let's get out of here.
I knew the viz was getting bad, but I didn't expect that
we have gnarly swells up there.
It's a good thing that my guys pulled me in.
They made the right call.
[bleep]
-Pretty good ground, too. -Oh, yeah.
-Freaking really good, huh? Shallow? -Yeah.
-Yeah, it's pretty good. -All right, man.
I'm really bummed that I didn't get more hours down there,
but the good side is, that material's really good.
We definitely made it count while we're running.
It's rough as [bleep] right now.
It's unbelievable.
I ended my dive halfway through.
I did, like, 2.5 hours so far.
but that's not enough.
And by the time I got up to the deck,
it's just already going like this.
Good gold, though, but you can only do
so much until the weather kicks in, you know?
Now we're heading back, though.
[bleep] we're safe.
All right, let's get the [bleep] out of here.
I can see a huge object from the horizon.
That's got to be the Mistress.
That's right.
It's the Mistress heading back in the harbor again.
I'm going to prank him a little bit.
It's going to be funny.
[Kris] Chris McCulley is [bleep] making fun of me right now.
This should be the uniform of the Mistress right here.
Paper bag over your head, you know?
Because there's a constant source of embarrassment.
Back in the harbor again. Look at that.
I wish we were a little closer.
I could [bleep] kick him off with something.
[laughs]
He's flipping me off right now, making fun of me.
They're so scared.
Like, who's that guy in the paper bag?
Oh, [bleep] this guy.
If his dad didn't own everything he has, he wouldn't have [bleep].
Do that [bleep] to my face.
I'll have all of your teeth in my pocket.
Not even one will be left in his mouth.
And I understand we're embarrassing ourselves.
Hey, you know what? I fight my friends all the time.
[man] Oh, yeah?
There's for sure some gold in this box.
[narrator] Most of the gold may have slipped away,
but Captain Kris is hoping enough stuck around
to keep Reaper Nation moving forward.
We're not gonna try.
We're going to kill it.
We're already on course to [bleep] do great.
Right now we gotta swap out the screens anyways,
so we might as well just do a clean-out.
Hank was killing it, so we definitely got gold.
Not as much as there should have been,
but hopefully there's enough gold that we can keep on
schedule with the crawler.
[Kevin] Good job, boys.
Yeah, that's looking good.
Hey, look at this.
-Yeah. -That's a nice piece.
[laughs] I love it, Kris, that's a good one.
You know what?
I've done enough gold clean-outs to know
don't count your gold before you weigh it.
It just puts you in a bad mood.
[grunts]
This day I've been dreaming about for six months already,
every night back in California.
I'm not dreaming about this day.
I'm dreaming the end of the season when I have
two big-ass [bleep] jars.
Here we go.
-That's one. -[Kris] Here we go.
-Two... -That's two.
-Three. -Three.
Four. Come on, baby.
Five.
Six.
-[Kevin] We're at seven, Kris. -Seven ounces.
-One more. -Eight. Nine.
-Oh, my God. Come on, nine. -[Kevin] Come on, ten.
-Ten. -There's ten. Ten.
Ten. Keep it coming. Keep it coming.
[Kris] It's 10.6 and some dust.
[Kevin] Bam!
[narrator] 10.6 ounces is worth almost $20,000
and while not the giant haul Kris had hoped for,
it's still a positive step to getting his beloved crawler
onto the Bering Sea.
-[Kevin]It's a proven concept. -Proven concept. That [bleep] boat makes gold.
-It makes gold. -[bleep]
So here's the deal.
We were barely out on the water and with those screens,
we're only working at half speed and we still got
over 10 ounces.
So if we can do that at full strength
all day long, I'm gonna make a fortune.
All we have to do exactly what we're doing
and I'll make a thousand ounces for the year.
Thousand ounces a year is, like, 1.9 million dollars.
That's not that bad for a summer job.
What a contraption, huh?
[narrator] While the fleet basks in an industrial renaissance,
back in the harbor...
Come to check out the spot. See how progress is going.
[narrator] It's the moment of truth for Shawn Pomrenke.
Can the Myrtle Irene's spud be fixed?
Or is Shawn's season over before it even begins?
Hey, Chuck. How you doing, buddy?
Is that it?
This is like going to the doctor and being told it's not fatal.
We won't need a new spud, so we will have some mining
in our future.
The big question is, how soon?
What are you thinking, Chuck?
Yeah.
Okay, well, a week, I can live with that.
It means when I get back out there,
there's going to be a ton of pressure on me.
But that's gold mining.
Well, hopefully we can get this knocked out.
Whatever it takes, it takes.
Don't be cutting no corners, otherwise we'll be doing it again.
Once I get the green light we're gonna have to kill it
like never before.
Quit whining, get back to mining.
We're getting there. It's just a long process.
[narrator] While the Pomrenke Empire is still on hold...
on the outskirts of Nome...
Why so many stacks, Chris?
Well, because we're going to do a big clean-out.
Chris McCulley's ready to weigh the days,
as well as the entire week's worth of gold.
Here we go.
And the young gun may already be quickly
setting himself apart from the rest of the fleet.
So this is like a washing machine.
It cleans out all the unnecessary dirt,
and it leaves the gold clean.
We got on the water early this season,
so we've been on the hot pay streak,
And so far today, the box is looking good.
Moment of truth.
Ta-da! Wow!
That's full.
See right there?
Look at that.
Lumps of gold right there.
Honestly, the material looks insane.
I can't wait to see how much hits the scale,
because I'm really stoked on how much gold I got.
I'll go ahead and dry these out.
Just to be traditional, I choose to weigh my gold
in grams and not ounces.
and my scale can only do 1,000 grams.
So it's a bit of process to get the final number,
but, hey, there's a lot more anticipation that way.
Okay, so here we go.
Okay, all right, first there, that's 519 grams.
There's 200, there's 300, 500 grams,
six, seven...
We got 949, that's just 949.
500, 600.
Ooh, tip the scale again.
978.
I'm shaking right now, and now I get the shakes.
Now this is just, ooh, a very lucrative spot.
That's it.
349 grams.
Oh, the pickers.
Nine grams, nine grams of pickers.
Add all that up together.
Oh, yeah, 90 ounces.
Yeah.
-Yeah... -Good work, man.
Check this out, though. Check this out.
[narrator] 90 ounces is worth a whopping $166,000.
And Chris McCully isn't just starting this season off with a bang.
He's starting it off with a boom.
If your scale doesn't look like that, e-e-e-e-e-e-e...
it ain't buying nothing. Yeah.
I'm almost speechless.
To start off our season like this,
we're off and running.
I know I set a goal for 300 ounces,
but I may have set the bar too low.
The sky is the limit at this point.
Money!
Gold!
Look at that.
We're way ahead of everybody. You snooze, you lose, boy.
[laughs]
[narrator] Chris McCully leads the pack,
while Mr. Gold is not even on the board.
Next time on Bering Sea Gold...
[Emily] I just had a baby.
Now it's a matter of needing to make money
to support the family...
Whoo-hoo!
We're on the gold, but it's getting dangerous.
[bleep] damn it!
Finally, Myrtle's ready to rock and roll.
Oh, this stuff looks amazing. Yeah!
[Vernon] Gold is out there calling us.
It is addictive.
I'd probably be better off if I was a sex addict.
Oh, oh, I can't breathe.
Yeah, I don't know.
Oh, [bleep], we got water going through the whole boat.
We're sinking.
-We're killing it. -[bleep] yeah.