[narrator] Time now for the Bering Sea Gold mid-season status report.
Who bathed in success?
Here it goes.
Best day ever.
[man 1] I love it when a plan comes together.
[narrator] Who felt the bitter taste of failure?
- [man grunts] - [groans]
[bleep]
[narrator] And now,
as the head to the back half,
will they ride out on a hot streak?
[man 2] Boo-ya!
[man 3 on radio] This is the best gold I've seen in this season.
- Very funny. - Ha!
[narrator] Or be left out in the cold?
[grunts]
[man 2] You wanna get on in there first?
- I'll get in there. - Boo-ya.
- We'll have this all warmed up and ready. - [man 4] Perfect.
[narrator] As Shawn Pomrenke begins the back half of winter,
he finds himself in an unfamiliar place,
on a losing streak.
Season started out hot.
Every hole was paying off.
This last one turned up empty.
Honestly, I can't even remember the last time that happened.
And now I got McCully on my tail.
Not a good time for this.
So, I went back to the drill rocks.
I'm pretty sure this is gonna be a path back to redemption.
If it isn't, I'll be scrambling on the second half.
Boo-ya! Good to go.
[Shawn on radio] All right. Made it to the bottom.
Seems like there's some fresh ground out in front of us here, Joe.
[Joe] Fresh ground's the best kind of ground to look at.
[Shawn on radio] Yeah, go ahead. Throttle up.
[Joe on radio] All right-y. Here it comes.
Throttling up!
[motor whirring]
[Shawn] Ah, here we go.
See what's in there.
[Joe on radio] What do you think of that ground out in front of you?
[Shawn on radio] Quite a bit of sand down here.
[Joe] See any gold yet or what?
[Shawn] I'm looking for it, buddy. I'm looking for it.
Aw, keep them eyes peeled.
[Shawn] Yeah, it's gray hard pan.
And then it goes cobbled.
But just not seeing it.
No gold.
It's like a knife in my soul.
Brings on all these bad emotions.
[Shawn on radio] I just don't see the color.
Got me thinking about our next move already.
[Joe on radio] Yeah, let's go ahead and let this thing moved.
[Shawn] I'm coming up.
[Joe] [bleep] yeah.
Man, I must be losing my touch.
Second spot in a row coming up a bust.
Can't spend the rest of my season hunting and pecking.
I hope moving away from the Tomcod this season
ain't gonna bite me in the ass.
So, fingers crossed,
after we move, hopefully, we get back on the good stuff.
[Joe] We better just keep moving, huh?
[motor whirring]
[narrator] While Shawn continues to struggle,
[Chris] We got lots of ground to work on.
About to tear this [bleep] up.
[narrator] Chris McCully keeps on rolling.
You gotta keep making money,
can't stop now, you know?
This season's been pretty sick already.
We've been crushing it.
And last time out, we found a sweet new spot,
and we nicknamed it Wall Street.
We pulled an all nighter as soon as we found it.
We're all pretty drained right now, but I don't really wanna stop the train.
So, I've got a guest diver that's coming in today
so we can keep the gold coming in.
Jessie Holmes is a buddy of mine,
who is the top Iditarod racer.
For years, Jessie wanted to go ice mining with me.
He's in town for the race,
which is really good for me 'cause I really need a diver right now.
We're on good stuff.
Right now, we're on Wall Street.
So, you're gonna get to experience stuff.
- There! See gold action. - [Jessie] Wow.
This spot is really hot.
This is absolutely the perfect spot for Jessie to go dive.
He's gonna keep our team fresh.
And we're gonna keep loading that box.
This is it. You're geared up and ready to rock and roll.
Take it easy.
[on radio] Mic check, mic check. Jessie, copy?
[Chris] Yeah, cool, cool. Loud and clear.
[Chris] When you get to the nozzle, let me know,
so that we can idle you up.
Here we go, idle up.
So, how's the life below 32 feet?
[Jessie laughs]
You seeing gold?
Yeah, dude!
[Jessie] Whoo-hoo!
Jessie, I think you're a gold musher now,
not a dog musher.
[laughs]
[narrator] Back in Nome...
[man 5] Well, we're making progress.
We got it all the way through.
[man 6] It went all the way through?
- [man 5] Yeah. - Damn.
[narrator] After a stellar first half of the season,
Zeke Tenhoff's looking to ride the momentum for the rest of the winter.
[Zeke] All right, we're in business.
Yeah, I almost totally lost hope there for a minute.
[chuckling]
The season's been going super well so far.
And I wanna keep it going on this next new hole.
We're saving a lot of time with the hole melting device that we've made.
But right now, we're on a seriously thick pressure ridge.
So, it's taking us a lot longer than we expected to melt through.
Like, it's honestly pretty embarrassing
how long it's taking us to melt though this ice.
It should take no time at all to melt these holes.
It's already working it's way in.
[man 5] We've put it on at two.
Hopefully, by three it's punched through.
[Zeke] We went through six feet of ice.
And now, there's another four or five feet of ice to go through.
Passing through another layer, and then, there's another layer.
All these [bleep] chunks. All this [bleep].
We got a dive hole, baby!
Great!
The hole melter melted all the way through.
So, it's like, ten feet of ice.
There' probably multiple layers of pressure ridge.
A pressure ridge is where the winds and the tides force the ice into itself
and create a upside down mountain of ice underwater.
Diving under this pressure ridge is super scary
because these loose ice chunks could float up and plug your ice hole
that you dive in and out of.
I'm gonna suit up.
Our last hole we dug right next to a pressure ridge,
and that was dangerous enough for me.
But now, we're trying to tunnel right directly through the pressure ridge.
And that adds a whole new level of danger.
But I suspect that the gold is good enough that it'll be worth it.
...pause for dramatic effect.
[laughing]
All right. I'm on the bottom.
I'm hoping it doesn't look too dangerous
because we worked really hard to get this hold cut,
and it'd be nice to pull some gold out of it.
Pump action.
[motor whirring]
[Zeke] All right.
Let's just hope our hard work pays off in gold.
[man 5 on radio] If it shines in dark, that's what it is.
Whoo, baby! The gold's good.
- Yeah! - Yeah, baby!
The gold's that good. It was all worth it.
[man 5] It was all worth it. Yeah.
That's what it is.
[man 7] I got the cameras hooked up and working.
The lights are working.
This machine's ready to go in the water.
We're doing it today!
[narrator] After spending half the season working out the kinks,
Kris Kelly is finally ready to put his bottom crawler to work.
So, we're gonna lift the gold crawler up in the air.
We're gonna slide out those 4x4s.
And then, we're gonna jam it in the [bleep] hole.
That's what we're doing. So, it's breaking the tradition.
Stand by in position.
- Does everybody know their jobs? - Yeah.
- One on each side of the crawler. - Yep.
Standby, let's rock and roll.
This season's been a dumpster fire so far.
We're aiming for 75 ounces and this crawler to do its magic.
And so far, we have no gold
and the crawler hasn't even gotten underneath the water.
Let's do this, team! Let's do this!
We finally have everything ready. Cameras, power supply, everything.
Trying to use an underwater crawler in ice mining sounds crazy.
But we're about to shock Nome and get rich in the process.
Hey, we're ready. Let's do it!
[thuds]
Going down.
That [bleep] sucks.
We're [bleep]. I don't know what to do.
We finally got this thing in the water and it's going down great.
But Andy was too slow to get the hose in the water,
and the suction hose ripped apart.
One step forward, one messed up step backwards.
The hose, where it connects,
we had too much weight on it.
And we should've pushed it in a lot more.
It broke off.
What happened? Did you guys just couldn't move this?
Right, we're trying!
[Kris] Yeah, well, it broke.
- Yeah? - It broke right off.
Yeah, everything broke.
[bleep] me.
We were that close to making it work.
We have to get this to work. It's killing me.
[narrator] 12 miles east...
Well, it's not gonna be a full day. It's 2:20.
[man 8] It's gonna be a full day.
You can bet your [bleep] ass it's gonna be a full day.
Well, a full day would be starting in the morning.
[man 8] A full day means at least eight hours.
So, whatever you want to do [bleep]. We're diving today.
- I didn't say we weren't. - I know. Full day.
It sounds more like a half day, but I'm not on half day.
You can do a half day if you want.
Sweet. I think I will.
[narrator] As the Riedel camp starts the back half of winter,
tensions are high, as the gold output is disturbingly low.
So, it's like this. Emily left to go have her baby.
And our plan is to get at least 75 ounces of gold for this season.
And so far we have, let me count...
Zero. Nothing. Nada.
So much has gone wrong and it's really frustrating.
So honestly, it's starting to make everybody a little irritable.
[Jane] I know. Will do.
I get that I'm a newbie,
but we still need to all do our part,
and we need to put like, our big-boy snow pants on.
We need to get our [bleep] together and we need to get gold.
[Jeff on radio] Okay.
[Jane on radio] Okay, sounds like a plan.
[Jane] 120.
[inhales] It's...
[inhales] Um...
[struggled breathing]
Your air is like, 100.
[Jeff] Okay.
[Jane on radio] Roger.
- Is that better? - [Jeff on radio] Um...
[Jane] 140!
[Jane] Roger. That's happening.
- [on radio] You're on 120. - [Jeff on radio] Okay.
[Jane] So, for air pressure, our optimal spot is 120.
If it gets too low, the diver's not getting any air
if it goes high, then our system just goes wonky.
There's always a little bit of a fine tuning,
especially, like, on the onset of a dive.
I'm gonna keep watching the gauge.
As I always do. So, there's no reason to get testy.
It just keeps scraping down.
[man 9] I know. It's filling a lot right now.
It's just weirded out.
- [Jane] Jeff... - [man 9] Don't tell him that. Don't tell him.
- He doesn't need to know. - [Jane] Why?
- It sounds like a problem. - [man 9] No, it's not a problem.
It's a situation.
- [Jane] I know. But this has never happened before. - Oh!
[Jane] So, throttle keeps creeping down. Why is that?
[Steve on radio] I don't [bleep] know. I'm not up there!
Hey, don't turn it that high!
That's way too much.
[Jane on radio] Okay, yeah. I'm sorry. Just closing it.
Another day in paradise.
[bleep] yeah.
[narrator] Despite the overhead threat of the thick pressure ridge,
Zeke Tenhoff is closing in on a multi-hour dive under the ice.
[Zeke on radio] There's cracks in bedrock with pieces of gold in it.
This is exactly what I was expecting and hoping that it would be.
[Noah on radio] Yeah, roger that.
We're moving ground, we're making money.
Roger.
[Zeke grunting]
[thuds]
What's up?
[bleep]
[groans]
[Noah] Oh, [bleep].
[Zeke grunting]
[grunting continues]
That's exactly why pressure ridges are so dangerous.
Chunks of ice can break off and float to the top of your hole,
and essentially, cut you off from the surface.
So, my tether got snagged in some pieces of ice
and I had to wrestle it to get it free.
It's scary. It's terrifying. No doubt.
Damn.
This is like, the sketchiest thing that could possibly ever happen.
Honestly, if I'd come up just a few seconds later,
there could've easily been no path out.
The gold is super good here.
It might just be too dangerous and hazardous to continue mining at this spot.
So, we'll have to leave this hole behind and find a new one moving forward,
that's not under a giant pressure ridge.
Sketchy.
[Sam] Yeah, pretty sure.
It's not a cool ice hole.
So, it's time to bail.
[narrator] Eight miles east,
[Shawn] Back a little bit.
Right there's good.
[narrator] After two straight busts,
Nome's most legendary miner
finds himself in desperate need of rich ground.
We need to get onto something real quick here.
Can't believe I'm saying this but
if there ain't gold here, we're in real trouble.
Even though we have an efficient operation and we can move quick,
we just can't spend every day with nothing to show for it.
It's starting to feel like now or never.
Hopefully, Joel taps into something huge.
[Joe on radio] Get on some gold, buddy.
[Shawn] What type of bottom under the gravel?
Come on. Come on.
[Shawn] Yeah! [laughs]
[laughing melodically]
[Shawn on radio] Big money.
Sometimes, you start doubting yourself.
But you gotta believe that you're making the right decisions
and you're moving in the right direction.
We're back on the gold,
and I have no intention on letting up this season.
[Joe on radio] This is badass, dude.
Yeah.
[narrator] Welcome to BSG's Mysteries of the Sea,
the only quiz show that there is to ask,
what strange treasure did Shawn's team find
hidden in the depths?
Was it, A, a wooly mammoth tusk.
[elephant trumpets]
B, the remains of Kris Kelly's burnt out shack.
[bleep]
C, an antique anchor.
Or D, the gates of Atlantis.
- [man 10] What the... - [woman] What?
[narrator] If you guessed C... [bell dings] ...you're right.
- [Shawn] Yeah! - [man 10] It's a big anchor.
[narrator] Tune in next time to uncover more...
Mysteries of the Sea.
[laughs]
Hell yeah! Joel, nice find, man!
Might've been 100 years since this thing got surfaced.
Our mission is always to find gold.
And thank God that happened today.
But we're treasure hunters at heart.
When we find something cool like this antique anchor,
we just gotta shut down and bring it up.
Nice job.
[chuckles]
Not only did Joel find this cool antique anchor,
he anchored us straight on the hotspot to boot.
It's time to load up this box day after day,
until this pay streak runs out.
It's gold time.
They don't make 'em like that anymore.
That's the tattoo I'm getting on my forearm.
[Shawn] Nice job, Joel.
[narrator] As Shawn gets back on track...
[Chris] I can't believe a dog musher is sucking up gold.
[Chris] Keep it up!
[narrator] Chris McCully isn't missing a beat
as musher-turned-diver, Jessie Holmes
has already logged four solid hours on Wall Street.
Hey, idle down. He's coming up.
Yeah, dude. [laughs]
Even though we work an all-nighter,
we still find a way out to keep the gold rolling in.
Jessie killed it.
There's gold in the corner of the box.
Team's fresh. We're crushing it.
I don't think Shawn will be able to catch up with me.
- [Jessie] Oh, my god. - Yeah, look at that.
[Jessie] That's a little nugget there, man.
[Chris] Wow, man.
- That's pretty cool. - Big piece right here.
I might be getting a gold fever now, dude.
[Chris] Cool, man. [bleep].
[narrator] Well, technically, the much bally-hoo'ed underwater crawler
did make it into the water.
But not for very long.
[Kris] We can do a quick fix just to make this work,
but it won't swivel.
But at least, we'll get gold today.
So, there's really only two choices to fix this suction hose.
First, we take the time and money to do this right and professional.
But honestly, we have no money and we're running out of time.
Second choice, we do something janky with the rope,
try to hold everything together just to get gold.
Yeah, I'm going with choice number two.
We got our quick fix in place,
50-50 chance it works,
but it's better than nothing.
We're gonna drop it down, throw the hose in, and see where we are from there.
Hey, are you ready?
Okay.
We just gotta finish lowering this thing out.
Okay, ground floor.
Success!
[applause in background]
Hey, we made it on the bottom.
The hose needs to come up.
And everything's good.
Yes, the MacGyver fix worked.
The hose is still attached
and the crawler has touched down on the sea floor.
This is an epic moment in Reaper Nation history.
Okay, go ahead.
[Kris] I'm sending Andy down there to check on everything
and make sure everything's running smoothly.
Then it's time to start sucking up gold, making money
round the clock, with no divers.
Boom, baby!
[Kris] Huddling up. Standby.
Here we go.
Well, I can see material ripping on the sides.
Hey, is it sucking material up?
Ha!
[Kris] That's what I'm talking about.
The defining chapter of Reaper Nation history has begun.
The crawler's working perfect. No need for divers.
No limits to how long we mine.
This crawler will be our ticket to the biggest cleanouts Nome's ever seen.
You're right. This thing's [bleep] working.
[man 11] It's working great. Damn.
[Kris] Oh, watch this [bleep].
Yeah, it [bleep] moves everything, dude.
Okay, well let's just keep smashing into things.
[man 11] This thing takes it all.
[Kris] Thank God it's happening!
[narrator] As one team makes progress...
[man 9] Ask him if he's got suction.
[Jane] Do you have suction?
[man 11] "Kind of"?
[narrator] Jane and her crew are still struggling to get on the same page.
Tell him eddy is messing with the...
the machines.
[Jane] eddy's messing with the... with the...
- [man 11] The pump. - [Jane] ...pump.
[Jane] We have no gold.
We really needed today to be a big one.
But instead, it's been more of the same.
Issue after issue, after issue
and nothing is going smoothly.
It's starting to become a combustible mess
that's ready to explode this team.
It's not ideal. Like, not at all.
[Jeff on radio] How's my air?
[man 11] You're at about a 100.
I'm trying.
I'm inexperienced and I'm trying.
Why would you say that?
What is your [bleep] problem, man?
- Yeah. - [Jeff] Excuse me?
[Jane] Because you have a problem with us.
What the heck was that all about?
[Jane] I don't know.
So, that wasn't cool.
But I'm not surprised something like that happened.
When you're not getting any gold,
and when like, nothing's going right,
tensions definitely boil over.
But at least screaming at me is not gonna make the situation any better.
In fact, things can go from bad to worse in a hurry.
[man 9] Uh-oh.
- What the hell? - [Jane] I don't know.
Uh...
- [Jeff on radio] Okay. - [man 9] So, do you wanna come up? Or...
[Jeff on radio] Yeah.
[man 9] All right. Copy.
[Jeff] How's that box looking?
- I just don't like it. - I feel like we're...
- Wasting time? - Dude...
I [bleep] have the same feeling.
[man 12] I know.
Let's shut the pump up, check the box.
[Jane] Everything's falling apart right now.
The only thing that can turn this around
is if we actually got some gold before Jeff came up.
Maybe seeing some ounces on the scale would turn those frowns upside down.
I can see gold in here.
- [Jeff] Oh, you can see gold in there? - [Jane] Uh-huh.
[Jeff] Good.
[hairdryer blowing]
[Jeff] Weigh it and see what we got.
0.66.
Man, at least it's something.
[narrator] 0.66 ounces is worth about 1,200 bucks.
A meagre result,
especially when it's the grand total for the season thus far.
[Jeff] Still gotta pay the bills.
[man 13] This is not "yippee-ki-yay" type gold.
But sometimes what you gotta do is just
keep plugging away until you hit.
[narrator] Vernon Adkison's season has been a rough ride.
[groans]
[narrator] And now he's hoping to find a way back onto the golden road.
We gotta get some gold in the box and start paying some bills.
I don't know exactly what the [bleep] I'm going to do.
- Well, we're [bleep]. - There's the clay.
Yeah, that's all clay. That's all clay.
This is working.
Oh, it hits everything, man.
[narrator] It may have been a long march to the bottom of the sea,
but the Kelly's crawler is finally alive and kicking.
[man 11] It looks good, James. Look at that.
This thing hums, dude.
- [Kris laughs] - This thing hums, dude.
Finally, watching this crawler work,
it's like a dream come true.
This season may have been rough so far,
but I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.
We're gonna be out of the red and into the black in no time.
[man 11] Well, it runs great, James.
Let's start moving some ground now.
Look at that.
Okay, now watch it when I [bleep] pull it forward.
[bleep] annihilating it.
Blocks of beautiful black material.
Something's wrong.
It's not going backwards. It's not going backwards.
[man 9] Put your nozzle up a little bit and back up.
Well, it's stuck.
It's 'cause of the [bleep] suction hose.
Well, that fell apart in a hurry.
So, the crawler can go forward, which is great.
But it can't go backwards.
So, as of right now, it's completely impractical.
Probably 'cause there's so many hoses wrapped around each other going down.
There was no organization done.
The lines weren't checked properly.
It's a mess.
And I know whose fault that is.
All you had to do was untangle the hose from the hydraulic umbilical.
Well, then what's wrong with this [bleep] thing?
It starts off on the right, now it's all the way on the left.
Do you think that's a problem?
Well, then why didn't you take care of that problem?
I'll do it myself.
I'll [bleep] do it all myself.
So, that's like a day's work to get this [bleep].
And I'll be the one fixing it, of course.
And I'll be doing it in the morning,
so we just wasted another day.
Hooray for Reaper Nation. Yippie.
It's like, almost ten o' clock at night.
Let's shut everything down,
and tomorrow, I'm gonna go down there myself.
I'll clean up my own mess, like I always do.
I didn't really need a [bleep] idiot to look at the nozzle.
I needed a [bleep] idiot to move around the suction hose.
Can't get changed out of here soon. Let's go home.
[narrator] Just across the ice...
I wanna get weighed up and cleaned out.
We need more gold, for sure.
Busy as a one legged cat in a sandbox.
Know what I'm saying?
[laughs]
[narrator] After narrowly escaping the dangers of the massive pressure ridge,
the pressure's on the Tenhoff crew
to deliver a big number on the scale.
Previous holes, we did okay.
And it's like, we're kind of like, at the same three ounces a hole.
We spent three entire days trying to punch a dive hole through this pressure ridge,
only to find that it's too dangerous to continue mining right here.
That should be dry enough.
That's a lot of effort for just one cleanout.
Hopefully, it's gonna prove to be worth it.
But my gut is telling me that we're gonna be disappointed.
That would be a bummer and time is definitely of the essence right now.
We're gonna weigh the gold on the scale.
I'm excited to see what it looks like.
[Shawn] One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
- A little over 666. - [Noah] No way.
Yeah, no. 6.9.
- Almost seven. - [Noah] Yeah!
- All right. - [Zeke] Yeah.
[narrator] 6.9 ounces is worth a hearty $13,000
and keeps Zeke and the boys on pace
to break their 25 ounce season goal.
[Noah] That's a great haul.
That's good money in my bucket.
We just need to like, grind out a bunch of more holes
to be in a decent place.
Good news, that gold haul was definitely more than I was expecting.
The tricky part is that we need to keep moving.
We need to find the next spot, and then the spot after that
and keep this momentum going.
It's just simple math, and it's like,
well, we know how much effort it's gonna take to like,
do another seven or eight holes.
You know? And I don't see a reason why we can't do that.
We just gotta hustle.