Jake Anderson has seen better days out in the Bering Sea. In fact, it’s as if the sea has something against him this season on Deadliest Catch.
Surveying the roiling and crashing waves that are topping 40 feet in some swells, Jake, captain of the F/V Saga and the former protege and greenhorn for Northwestern Captain Sig Hansen, says: “She’s howling…this is the roughest weather I’ve seen this season right now.”
The ship is shown heaving and dipping down so steeply it’s a miracle the crew stays on the deck at all.
Mike Rowe, who narrates the series, sounds dire in his commentary, saying: “Facing crew-crushing waves once again, Jake stares down the barrel of yet another shutdown.”
Just a few weeks back the F/V Saga was slammed with a rogue wave in the middle of the Bering Sea.
This entire season, Jake Anderson’s Saga has struggled with few wins and mostly misses in his bid to catch crab in the numbers he needed to meet his quota.
But through the season he has received some fishing advice from his former boss Sig Hansen of the F/V Northwestern and Keith Colburn of the F/V Wizard, all of whom look out for him despite occasional flares of temper over scouting crab fishing sites.
Deadliest Catch fans know that Anderson began on the series with Sig Hansen back in 2007 and that he has suffered terribly during the course of the show, losing his sister to complications from pneumonia, and his father in a terrible accident.
Tonight, lady luck needs to show up and bring some crab with her for Anderson, whose first pot pull of live crab in this awful weather is a scant 65, as called up by the crew who unload the haul in the high seas.
As he watches, the building high waves send his boat up in the air and crashing back dow. Jake says: “At some point, we are going to have to fish…can’t just keep taking days off because the bags are down and the waves are too big. I’ll never go home.”
The crew is in full storm gear and on high alert. Sean, the deck boss, underscores their awareness of what kind of work they signed up for.
Sean says: “It’s dangerous but everybody knows that when they signed that paper.”
Explaining his strategy, Jake says: “I don’t know how long we’re going to do this today, but we’re just going to fight back. I’ve got like sixty, seventy miles spread on the gear…200 pots…I haven’t been through all of this… this is our most shallow stuff, let’s see.”
The pot is pulled up and groans are heard from Jake off camera as the haul looks light, and sure enough far fewer live crabs come out of the pot than hoped. “It’s going to be a long string,” says Jake.
Hopefully tonight things turn around for Anderson and the crew of the Saga. Tune in to Discovery to find out if they do.
Deadliest Catch airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on Discovery.