[Jake] Being out here doing this job...
it's about survival.
But infections on boats are bad.
Getting poked by a crab.
There's old cod guts.
There's all kinds of stuff down there that'll make you sick
in all kinds of ways.
[suspenseful orchestral music plays]
We got -- one of our guys has got some kind of infection
on his face.
This is something that's going through the boat.
But there's a lot of crab to catch.
I can't stop. I'm going to keep going.
[Matt speaking]
I got something on my eye that's swollen.
I got a little spot on my lip.
I've been in a lot of pain in my life, I've --
this is the worst.
[Jake] It looks like a pimple.
It smells like cheese.
This isn't like being at work where you just get in a car
or call an ambulance,
two minutes later, you're at the hospital.
It'll kill you.
It's going to be tough. I think I can do it.
[ominous chord strike]
[narrator] 215 miles north of Dutch Harbor...
I should probably check out the ice report...
before we get going.
A little north, not gonna do much.
Saturday, we got west.
That will hold it at bay.
Yeah, that ice edge is going to be gone.
Gone, gone.
...aboard the Aleutian Lady.
[man speaking]
Wrapping up bairdi, crossing that finish line...
is my goal this week.
The quicker I can catch our quota,
the more money we make.
So I think we're going to set this gear over here...
towards the ice...
because we're in the right depth.
Between 80 and 84 fathoms is
where I'm seeing big, clean crab.
As long as what's forecasted happens,
that ice is gonna be gone in two days.
Stop!
All right, guys.
[man] What?
[Rick on radio]
[man] Going over.
[Rick] It looks like this float right here...
that looks pretty decayed.
The fact that the water temperature right here
is 37 degrees...
we're just gonna go slow just to be safe.
I do not want to hit anything big.
Oh, we're going right for it. Look at that thing.
[Rick on radio]
[Nico] Jeez.
Whoo!
[Rick] Little bit sketchy.
[man] Whoo!
[man #2] Yeah, baby!
[Rick on radio]
[bleep].
[man and Nico speaking]
The buoys are still floating on the ice.
Going over.
I was getting a little worried when we started off
hitting that stuff,
but it's looking pretty dang good right now.
So just keep jamming.
[man] OK, going over.
[Rick] Hopefully the crab are still there,
and we'll be good.
50 miles southwest...
[Albinio speaking]
[Jake] What do you got?
[Albinio speaking]
And you're gonna have to put some gloves on and...
[pop]
[Jake] You ain't lying.
[Albinio] Yeah.
[Jake] Need the old trusties.
[Albinio] Stab that bitch, and then I'll squeeze.
All right, here it comes.
You want me to squeeze it a little bit?
Yeah.
-That good? -Yeah.
[suspenseful music plays]
[Jake] Oh.
-[Jake] Nice. -Coming out?
[Jake] Oh, yeah.
It looks pretty good.
The infection came out, and then it was straight blood,
which makes me not worry about it.
...and I'm good.
-[Jake] OK, cool. -Thanks, dude.
Ooh. Painful in the face, man.
It's always painful in the face.
A lot of guys would ask for a string off after that...
but...
it's not his style.
[suspenseful music plays]
Aboard the Cornelia Marie.
All right, you can set it when you're ready.
[man on radio] Roger.
Going over.
[Jake] I got an offload fast approaching.
Just got one more tank to fill.
It's a lot of [bleep] pressure.
I have to get to the processing plant not a minute late.
So I gotta hurry up and make this push.
[man] Hey, go, go, go, go, go.
[Jake] I think the crab are moving south now.
And that's what we've been tracking through this canyon.
[man] Going over.
Wind is coming from the south and the southwest.
It's going to stir up all the sediment and everything
that's in the ground, the worms,
the clams, everything that the bairdi eat.
[man] Rail, rail, rail.
Six weeks into the winter season, Captain Jake Anderson
leans on his battle-worn six-man crew...
[crew member speaking]
...betting 40 pots on a feed-rich ravine
just three days before delivery.
Here we go.
[groans]
[man] Going over.
[Jake] Gonna go check Matt out.
38-year-old "Deadliest Catch" cameraman Matt Holland,
now Cornelia Marie patient number two.
...falls victim to an inflamed, subcutaneous pustule growing
between his nose and mouth.
[Jake speaking]
[crew member] Hey, watch the rail!
Whoo-hoo!
[Jake] It looks like a pimple.
And it's infected, or it's MRSA.
It looks ugly.
[crew member] Going over!
[Jake speaking]
100 miles northwest...
on the bairdi crab grounds...
[Sig] Oh, oh, oh.
...aboard the Northwestern.
Ah.
We've got 50 pots on deck.
There's a good scratch of fishing around,
so we have some life in 56 fathoms,
but this weather is just killing us.
That's not what we forecast.
Yeah, this will be interesting.
A little strip of green, that's our window right there.
And that is gonna come around...
like gangbusters.
See if we can get them out during this window
of decent weather before the switch.
Straddling two converging low pressure systems,
Captain Sig Hansen looks to time a 50-pot set
during a meteorological phenomenon
known as a saddle point...
Is there enough time to set the string in there?
I don't know.
...the zone between storms,
where weaker pressure gradients
mean a reprieve from 70-mile-an-hour gusts
and towering 25-foot seas.
[ominous music plays]
OK, see that? That's the cue.
Wind just died down. See it?
We'll get these off quick.
We only got so much time in the eye of this thing.
[crew member] Let's go
Going over!
Bairdi!
Whoo-hoo!
[crew member speaking]
OK.
[Karl] We're in the eye of the storm right now,
you can see when we first started setting,
it was windy, and now it's getting calm.
We can do as much as we can in the eye.
Get these pots off.
[Sig] OK.
You can see, it's starting to pick up.
It's just -- you can hear a little gust, but you can
see the top of the waves are starting to
blow the other way.
-Going over. -Going over.
Going over.
[crew member] Over.
Well, this is not...
Ooh.
[bleep].
This isn't gonna be good.
Weather's changing. The wind direction's changing.
Watch out for a second. It's coming on the rail.
-I gotta change -- I gotta change direction. -[crew member] Whoa.
[Sig] Watch the rail.
[crew member] Whoo!
-I gotta change -- I gotta change direction. -[crew member] Whoa.
It's not ideal. I mean, we gotta change
almost 90 degrees just to get these off safely.
I'm trying to blast these off as quick as possible.
Going over.
It's not as shallow as we want it to,
but it's going to have to work for now.
[groans]
Going over.
I mean, that door just slammed shut on us.
See if we get lucky.
96 miles southeast...
[Sam] I'm sorry, buddy.
...on the Cornelia Marie.
[Jake] Oh, it's all right. I totally get it.
Yeah.
Matt is one of our camera personnel...
and he films the deck crew,
so he's got a very difficult job.
He's got some kind of infection on his face,
give him some antibiotics.
We're hauling in this 52-fathom canyon that I found,
and hopefully it shows up with something good,
and then we'll be able to set our load here.
I'm in a corner. I got an offload to make.
All right, fellas...
[crew member] Come on, crab!
It's in the block. Let's see what we got.
-Coming up. -[indistinct].
[crew member] Yeah!
Oh, my God. There's crab in there.
[crew members cheering]
Whoo-hoo!
Oh, [bleep], thank God.
-Whoo! -Yeah, we're happy.
[crew member] 200!
Oh, yeah.
That's some good numbers right there.
-[Jake on radio] -Roger.
Whoo! Let's do it.
[Matt speaking]
The, uh...
the antibiotic's not working.
[Jake speaking]
All right.
[phone ringing]
[crew members cheering]
[Jake] This is Jake.
[Jake] Oh my God.
Um, I need help getting some kind of doctor or medevac
out for Matt.
Yeah, he's got a swollen --
Lisa.
Hey, Lisa.
Um...
Yeah, so basically yesterday my face started to, like,
kind of swell,
and it's obviously an infection,
and I took four Cephalexin yesterday,
and it's not responding.
[Matt] I'll send you a photo.
All right, well, I think that the best option is to
go to St. Paul.
Yeah, sorry, guys.
[Jake] All right, thank you.
We'll get him the help that he needs,
and then we'll go back out fishing.
Hopefully he can come back on the boat.
48 miles northeast...
and four miles below the forecasted ice edge...
...on the Aleutian Lady.
Half mile away.
I took a gamble...
fishing around the ice.
Now I'm hoping it's time to reap our reward.
I got 209,000 pounds of bairdi to put on the boat.
We just got to wrap it up strong, hit it good,
and get this done.
Oh, my gosh.
[bleep].
This ice is not supposed to be here.
[ominous chord strike]
Well, it looks like...
Yeah, roger.
Standing by to stand by.
[Rick] Hope and pray we're gonna be able
to get these pots right now.
If we lose the pots, we pay for them.
And that is a lot of money that none of us want to pay.
Please be there. Come on!
I don't think it is.
Oh, there it is, right at the face.
It's, like, about to go under.
-[crew member] Roger! -Come on.
[Rick] Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
Now it's under.
[bleep].
[Rick] [bleep].
On the Aleutian Lady...
[crew member] Roger.
We don't know if we're getting any of these pots back,
to be honest, but hopefully we get a few at least.
[Rick] We set by the ice.
I felt like the ice was
going to retreat and melt, but it didn't.
Now I'm going to be driving through that big stuff...
at night.
If I lose 43 pots,
I just ate in to all of our profits
for the winter.
There's no guarantee any of these pots are even going to be
where they're supposed to be...
but maybe.
Is that a pot or ice?
That might be a pot.
Roger.
[Rick on radio]
Let's just get as many of these as we can.
[crew member] Roger, roger.
Yeah, there's a few.
Not the start we wanted.
[two splashes]
[crew member on radio]
[Rick] This is not good.
We're gonna head right to our next pot.
Hopefully it's there.
[suspenseful music plays]
Come on, where are you?
Please be there, come on. I don't think it is.
[bleep].
We should see it.
This pot is not here.
This is the last thing I wanted to do,
running around in ice-filled waters at night.
I'm going to feel really defeated
if these pots are buried.
[Sam] Sanitized the whole room...
everything he touched.
-[crew member] Roger. -[crew member #2] Roger.
Careful.
[phone ringing]
[Matt on phone] Hello?
Hey, how's it going?
[bleep]damn.
What's the, uh, recovery time?
Oh, my God. Well, I'm glad to hear that you're OK.
I just wanted to call and check on you.
All right, get better, man.
All right, later.
It's a bummer. Matt's a good guy.
But the fact of the matter is, we've got to get
the hell out of here.
Filling in for Matt Holland,
28-year-old producer Kelsey Kroon
climbs aboard the freshly-sanitized vessel.
-[sneezes] Eh, sorry. -[Kelsey] Hello.
-Jake, good to meet you. -[Kelsey] Good to meet you.
[Jake] We got to go.
We're on crab.
We need to [bleep] get the [bleep] out of here now.
[crew member] Roger.
[Jake on radio]
[crew member on radio] [indistinct] go, go, go, go, go, go.
[Jake] We have a lot of work to do, and time is not on our side.
40 miles southwest...
[groans] Oh.
...on the Northwestern.
Setting through the eye, it was fine, and then just
instantaneously it came up where it didn't end up
exactly the way I was planning.
I wanted to be at 56 fathoms, and we're...
ended up a little deeper at 60 fathoms.
Hopefully we'll see some crab in it anyway.
We're going to haul these 40. There's two strings of 20.
OK.
Come on, crabs.
[Sig] Let's see what we got here.
Oh, hey.
[bleep].
[chuckles] Not very good.
55.
[crew member] OK, Roger.
[Sig] The numbers aren't strong enough.
We gotta move these pots.
But the weather's not gonna cooperate.
I'm hauling at night.
Hard to see the waves behind, you know, one behind
the next one.
It'd be nice to have a spotter over there.
I got a half a mind to just start running over
to the port side and take a look.
Port Side's not typically a hauling station.
That's for tying up.
Pretty unorthodox way to do it,
but I'm having a hard time to see the waves coming.
OK, give it a try here.
I can see the waves a little better here, but, you know,
I'm having a hard time staying on course and spotting the bad.
Ah!
There's a pot.
[bleep].
[crew member on radio] Here it comes.
-Bruh. -Nothing.
[bleep].
[Sig] We gotta get these moved.
[indistinct].
Ah!
[yelling]
On the Northwestern...
Oh, sorry about that.
What happened?
[yelling]
[crew member] Wah, wah, wah.
[Sig] OK.
[crew member speaking]
[Sig] Oh, we gotta get these moved. That's just the bottom line.
[crew member] Man, that's a...
One right there.
You see it, you got to slow down.
All right.
Oh my God.
[suspenseful music plays]
[crew member] Not good.
Numbers are garbage.
[grunts]
For a smoke -- for a smoker, yeah.
[suspenseful music plays]
[grunts] OK.
There we go.
Now I'll get a rhythm.
I want to get them on board fast, but safe.
The next string is right up above me here.
Let's hope there's more.
96 miles east...
[Jake speaking]
[crew member] Roger!
[Cody speaking]
...on the Cornelia Marie.
There's no room for error. There's no room for waiting.
I just got one more tank to fill
before I make my offload.
Yeah, I got something on my eye.
It's all swollen. Not sure what it is, but...
Yeah, we'll see what happens, right?
Ride it out. We'll see.
Thanks, Matt.
My lip feels like a piece of [bleep].
[Jake] This is something that's going through the boat.
I've seen infections before like this.
-No bueno. -[Albinio speaking]
You guys sleep?
[Cody] Woke up [bleep] drenched in sweat.
[bleep].
[coughing]
[Jake on radio]
...come inside.
[crew member speaking]
-Whoa! -Watch it!
[groans]
I don't need this [bleep] right now.
Go check on these guys.
-How we feeling? -What's up, Jakey?
-Pretty good. -[Jake] That don't look good.
Did you have any fever symptoms?
Yeah, I sat -- wake up every night and then [bleep] sweaty as [bleep].
Freaking just...
-How about you? -I got a little spot on my lip.
[Jake] Can I see it?
[tense music plays]
[groans]
That thing looks like it [bleep] hurts too, man.
[bleep], my whole leg hurts.
Yeah, we need to get into the clinic.
[Jake] Rough shape, man. Three people down.
[Jake] He couldn't walk,
and he had a fever.
I know, I know, I -- I know.
[ominous chord strike]
[coughs]
If they're all staph infection or MRSA, then yes,
we have an issue. And it's not coincidental.
It's nothing I can risk, so I have to go to town.
270 miles northwest of Dutch Harbor...
Ah.
The weather's still pretty [bleep].
Before we get through this one...
...on the Northwestern.
[Sig] That last string wasn't very good, but it's
shallowing up, so...
fingers crossed.
Whoa!
When you're hauling in bad weather, you're so
laser-focused, you can throttle into a wave.
You can throttle out of it.
So it's kind of like a...
ballet, believe it or not.
[crew members] Whoa!
[crew member] Roger, dodger.
You really got to use a lot of power to get up on the pots.
A lot of wind pushing us back.
The trick is to get to a dead stop if you can,
when you're putting them on board.
Pot's coming up!
-Oh, yeah! -[Sig] There you go.
That's looking better.
[crew member] Whoo!
[Sig] Now I can get in the ditch a little bit.
[grunts]
[crew member] Whoa!
[thunking]
[Sig] Now we're going to cut back.
You can't haul it straight, it's impossible.
[indistinct speaking]
OK, watch...
OK.
Ooh, big one.
-Ah. -Ah!
[crew member] Oh.
[crew member #2] Yucky.
So far so good?
-Yeah! -Yeah, yeah, yeah!
[crew member] Oh, yeah.
Well, you're not looking at what I'm looking at,
you're looking at crab
and laughing all the way to the bank.
[crew member] Yeah, buddy!
Let's go!
Oh, these are nice.
168, that's amazing.
I feel like we found the buried treasure.
All you gotta do is dig.
All right, guys, it'll...
[crew member] Roger!
[Rick] Hopefully it's there.
If we end up losing 18 more...
heaven help me.
I don't see nothing.
[suspenseful music plays]
Wow.
We're not getting through that one.
That ice is way too thick,
I don't think we're going to be able to get these pots
right now.
I'm just stressing out because...
the cumulated loss is going to be over $100,000,
and I've still got to catch my crab.
I just can't give up.
[bleep] me.
It's a cesspool.
Disinfecting.
Disinfecting everything we touch.
[Jake] All right, let's see what the damage is.
So, face infection.
Gave me some Cleocin and some Mupirocin ointment
to put on it.
Hopefully it clears it up in about three to five days.
He said you're cleared to go?
Cleared to go back to work today, full duty.
Nice. What about you, Johnny?
Same deal.
Got the same meds. Cleared to work.
[Jake] All right, Cody.
Um, it is staph,
but it's treatable with antibiotics.
-[bleep]. -[Cody] Um...
Just gave me a shot in my ass, antibiotic,
and then two more to take on the boat.
But...
Well, do you think you'd go to work?
-Yeah. -Thank [bleep] God.
[Cody] Yeah.
I don't want to lose any one of you guys.
So Josh and John, they're
cleared to work right now...
and Cody is cleared to work tomorrow.
We still have a lot of crab to catch.
[tense music plays]
[Jake on radio] Fellas ready?
[crew member] Yeah, roger.
[Jake] I can't hold us here any longer.
The guys are beat up pretty hard...
but here we go!
Let's go bairdi fishing.