Deadliest Catch

About Deadliest Catch

Deadliest Catch is a documentary-style reality television series that documents the events aboard fishing boats in the Bering Sea during the Alaskan king crab and Opilio crab fishing seasons. The Aleutian Islands port of Dutch Harbor (located in Unalaska, Alaska) is the base of operations for the fishing fleet. The show is named Deadliest Catch because the crew of these boats are at a high risk of injury or death.

Deadliest Catch premiered on the Discovery Channel on April 12, 2005. The first season had ten episodes, with the last airing on June 14, 2005. Season two was filmed one year later and began airing on March 28, 2006. Season three began airing April 3, 2007. April 15, 2008 was the fourth season premiere. On April 8, 2008 Discovery announced Deadliest Catch will return for a fifth season in its 2008-2009 lineup.

The series follows eight to ten crab fishing boats and their crews throughout two of the dangerous crab fishing seasons, the October king crab (frequently called "red crab" or "red gold" by crew members) season and the January opilio crab ("orange crab", "orange gold", or, as Northwestern crew member Matt Bradley dubbed it, "Norwegian money") season. The show emphasizes the very real danger to the crew on the decks of these boats, situations are just as dangerous for the Discovery Channel camera crews filming them as they are for any other member of the fleet. Each episode has a focus on a story or situation that occurs on one or more boats, with side stories on the backgrounds and particular activities of one or two crew members, in particular the "greenhorns" (inexperienced crew members) on several boats. The fleet's captains are featured prominently throughout the episodes, highlighting their camaraderie with their fellow captains and relationships with their crew, as well as their competitive nature against the other boats in the fleet regarding the hunt for crab throughout the fishing grounds. Common themes woven throughout the overarching storyline of the particular fishing season include friendly rivalries between the captains (particularly Jonathan Hillstrand of the Time Bandit and Phil Harris of the Cornelia Marie), the familial ties throughout the fleet (the Hansen brothers, who own the Northwestern; Phil Harris and his two sons on the Cornelia Marie; brothers Johnathan and Andy Hillstrand of the Time Bandit), the stresses of life on the Bering Sea, and the high burnout rate among greenhorns.