Some days you are the hammer, some days the nail. And today on the Summer Bay in the Bering Sea, that saying rang true for Wild Bill Wichroswski who thought he had the cat in the bag.
Ah, the sweet smell of a full crab boat and a successful crab season well served… that’s what we think we have in Tuesday’s edition of Deadliest Catch on Discovery.
But no. There’s trouble on the salty decks of Wild Bill Wichrowski’s Summer Bay as the skipper starts off in our exclusive clip full of good cheer and optimism and closes it out completely lasered in on the drama aboard his deck and the injury that came out of nowhere.
The bairdi crab race is over and the incredible hauls have Wild Bill just eighty-four hundred pounds shy of his quota he needs to fulfill. It all seems amazing and everyone is whooping and hollering on the deck.
The crew and Bill appear confident the rest of the weight is in the remaining sixty pots they have to pull up, and each pot is loaded to the gills with feisty bairdi crab, a type of snow crab that is meatier and prized by crab connoisseurs.
Bill is feeling “tingly.”
As the crew loads the crab holds with their bountiful hauls and are goofing around on the deck, Wild Bill tells the camera: “I’m all tingly… I got a little tingly [that] is going on.”
Then disaster strikes and Bill uses the PA speaker to ask what the heck is happening on deck. The mood literally went from party time to call an ambulance.
But who was it that got injured? Landon in the middle of the photo above, he got hurt, as Nick is on the left, and Tim on the right.
Who was on deck during the bairdi crab celebration gone bad?
On Wild Bill’s boat, we have deck boss Nick McGlashan, engineer Tim Boles (likely not on deck at the time of the incident) plus deckhand Landon Cheney and greenhorn Erik Brown.
Tough to say which three of the four are in the clip as their backs are to us however it appears to be Nick and Landon are in the shot and the third is the mystery person to find out during the episode.
Why is bairdi crab so prized?
Succulent meat is the short answer, as this snow crab variety is meatier than the traditional snow crab. People who know crab love to get these when in season and for a while, they were in real danger of being completely fished out. For a spell, you could not fish for these crab at all.
If you are curious about crab species and how to cook them, you can head here for a great primer in crab types and how to prepare them.
Watch what happens and see who was the unlucky Summer Bay deckhand:
Deadliest Catch airs Tuesday at 9/8c on Discovery.