Deadliest Catch - Format

Format

The series follows life on "the vast Bering Sea" aboard five or more crab fishing boats (the four featured vessels—Cornelia Marie, Wizard, Northwestern, and Time Bandit—and one or more "wild card" boats that are shown for all or part of a single season) during two of the dangerous crab fishing seasons, the October king crab season and the January opilio crab (a.k.a. C. opilio; often referred to as "snow crab" or "opies") season. The show emphasizes the real danger to the crew on the decks of these boats (and the Discovery Channel camera crews filming them) as crews ply their trade while ducking heavy crab pots swinging into position, maneuvering hundreds and thousands of pounds of crab across a deck strewn with tripping hazards (holding tank hatches, uneven surfaces, maintenance access plates), and leaning over the rails to position pots for either launch or retrieval as gale-force winds and waves four to five times taller than an average man constantly lash over the deck. The series also documents the dangers of even being on a boat in the Bering Sea crab grounds, in the midst of some of the coldest and stormiest waters on earth, where even the most minor problem becomes complex and requires considerable ingenuity to solve when the nearest port of any kind is often hundreds of miles away.

Each episode focuses on a story, situation, or theme that occurs on one or more boats, while side stories delve into the backgrounds and particular activities of one or two crew members, in particular the "greenhorns" (rookie crew members) on several boats. The fleets' 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 between Sig Hansen of the Northwestern, Johnathan Hillstrand of the Time Bandit, and Phil Harris of the Cornelia Marie), the familial ties throughout the fleet (brothers Sig, Norm, and Edgar Hansen, who own the Northwestern; Phil Harris and his two sons, Jake and Josh, on the Cornelia Marie; the Hillstrand family—brothers Jonathan, Andy, and Neil, and Jonathan's son Scott—on the Time Bandit; brothers Keith and Monte Colburn of the Wizard), the stresses of life on the Bering Sea, and the high burnout rate among greenhorns.

Because Alaskan crab fishing is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, the U.S. Coast Guard rescue squads stationed at Integrated Support Command Kodiak (Kodiak, Alaska) and their outpost on St. Paul Island, near the northern end of the crab fishing grounds, are frequently shown doing their own dangerous work: rescuing crab boat crew members who fall victim to the harsh conditions on the Bering Sea. The USCG rescue squad was featured prominently during the episodes surrounding the loss of F/V Big Valley in January 2005, the loss of F/V Ocean Challenger in October 2006, and the loss of F/V Katmai in October 2008. Original Productions keeps a camera crew stationed with the Coast Guard during the filming of the show.