TARGET 100630

Crab Fishing in the Bering Sea

Not your average fishing trip

When Alaskan king crab season begins each winter, hundreds of fishermen descend upon Dutch Harbor, Alaska. It's a race against time, in dangerous conditions, to catch as many crabs as possible.

Called, "The Deadliest Catch" by the Discovery Channel, it became a highly watched weekly show with a documentary theme. Watchers got to know the captains and crew of each boat and follow their trials and tribulations throughout the crabbing season.

The difficult-to-catch Alaskan king crab yields big profits, but only if fishermen can overcome dangerous obstacles. Those who cannot are short-timers to this occupation, and some of those are short-timers simply because they die or are irreprably maimed before the ship can get back to port. This really is a deadly occupation, and even at its safest, it is not for the faint of heart.

Sometimes, the weather is the worst enemy

King crab fishing is carried out during the winter months of October through January. The weather is often the crabber's worst enemy, as the freezing-cold salt water, storms, heavy waves, and blow-you-off-your-feet winds attack, seemingly from every direction.

The wealth of the catch

If the fishermen are successful, they can bring in millions of dollars worth of crabs, but if they aren't, they will barely cover their expenses, and worst of all, crew members may get hurt or even die.

Their greatest enemy is the cold.

The Discovery Channel's television series about crab fishing in the Bering Sea was one reality show in which reality is real: everything from the mishaps, the disasters and the haul of cash from the ocean.

The cameras rolled while they worked the deck at 20 degrees below zero, while they ate, while they went sleepless for days, and when a rogue wave hit the ship in the middle of the night.

The crew knew the cameras were there, but with the cold, the danger and the exhaustion, they just stoped caring and got on with their work.

FEEDBACK MAP

There is a lot of leeway in your dowsing for this target, because the ships do their work throughout the sea, but off the coast of the American continent in the Behring Sea.

To learn more about Bering Sea crab fishing, take a look at the following web sites:

EzineArticles.com
Deadliest Reports
Divaboo (Where the pictures came from)
ABC News Nightline

Many thanks to Photos by Corey Arnold of www.coreyfishes.com for the excellent pictures of the catch. To get these pictures, he had to go through what the workers did.