Tonight on Deadliest Catch, young captain Sean Dwyer of the Brenna A is exploring all avenues of edible income in the Bering Sea — and it’s time to fish for cod!
Scraping by during King Crab season with a small quota, Sean tells us in the exclusive clip below: “If cod can get me through to the next year, then that’s what I got to do.”
The young skipper is banking on his new cod license to keep his family business afloat.
Noting the vastly different styles of fishing, he says: “It’s kind of a cod freeway out here, you just want to be in the right lane.
“Fish aren’t like crab…they’re fast. You can chase the crab, but you can’t chase fish, so we’re setting up shop in their environment and they’ll just come hit the gear.”
The episode shows how, with cod too fast to chase, the captain has to strategically place dozens of pots in the water with bait inside to draw the fish in.
Once committed to a spot for fishing, the crew rebaits and resets in that location as many times as possible to create a “bait cloud” that attracts the cod for miles in every direction.
For food safety sake, he also has to stick to a much more compressed timeline. Cod, unlike crabs which can survive in a tank for seven to fourteen days, have a much smaller window to get from boat to the cannery.
Sean says: “I’ve got 72 hours from when that first fish comes over the rail and goes in the tank to when that fish needs to be at the dock delivered — or you run the risk of the fish going bad in your tank.
“Basically, there are bacteria in the fish that will start to eat it from the inside out.”
Sean then uses the intercom to alert Zack and the guys on deck that he’s ready for action, telling them: “First pot over the rail…go ahead and send it.”
Watch below as he plans to launch a hundred more pots.
Also tonight, as King Crab fishing season wraps up all the other captains race to hit their quotas — with the Saga and the Northwestern’s final trips clocked in.
Deadliest Catch airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on Discovery