Season 2
| Series # | Season # | Title | Original airdate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11 | 1 | "Heading Out to Sea" | March 28, 2006 (2006-03-28) |
| The crew returned to their boats in October 2005 for the start of the first King Crab season run under Individual Fishing Quota ("IFQ") rules. The fleet had been cut by over half due to new regulations and quotas; however, the season had also been lengthened to three weeks in an effort to make crab fishing safer by not forcing boats to fish during a small window of time that might be compromised by poor conditions on the Bering Sea. The returning captains toasted each other in the traditional pre-season dinner at the UniSea bar, with Phil Harris, captain of the Cornelia Marie and 20+ year rival of the Hansens on the Bering Sea, noting that he missed "being able to beat (Northwestern Captain Sig Hansen's) ass" under the new IFQ system, to which Sig Hansen responded that he glad he was "the ass to beat." The 2005 King Crab season was due to start on October 14, 2005; however, many boats decided not to leave port due to two reasons: Predicted severe weather over the fishing grounds, and superstition for "Unlucky Friday". The Time Bandit defied the superstition and left anyway, but its first few pots were nearly empty. The fishing picked up for the Time Bandit eventually. The Cornelia Marie had just started setting their pots when their main engine blew a head gasket. Mindful of the bad weather to come, Captain Phil Harris ordered his crew to offload the pots as fast as possible so that they could return to Dutch Harbor with an empty deck. Stuck at Dutch Harbor was the Maverick, which had failed its Coast Guard safety inspection; because the sinking of the Big Valley in January 2005 had been attributed at least in part to carrying a pot load 30% over its declared pot weight, all the boats got extra scrutiny about their pot loads, and the Maverick was carrying 30 more pots than was considered safe under the USCG rules. Maverick deck boss Blake Painter had been promised a promotion to Captain at the mid-point of the king crab season; getting the boat cleared by the Coast Guard was the first test current Captain Rick Quashnick gave to Blake to measure his readiness to take command. The new IFQ system gave each boat a quota of crabs to catch (often larger than the boats' previous take due to the decimation of the fleet) and a longer time window to catch them; thus, out at sea, as the weather worsened with warnings of severe storms approaching, captains had to make decisions about whether to continue fishing through the storm (as would be the case under the derby system) or find a safe port until the weather clears. | |||
| 12 | 2 | "Batten Down the Hatches" | April 4, 2006 (2006-04-04) |
| As a pair of storm systems began converging on the fishing grounds, several boats faced major mechanical issues made even more dangerous by the bad weather. The Rollo had a number of problems common to older fishing boats: Leaking hydraulic lines on the crane; broken hoses on the coiling block; two old ropes giving way on two separate pots, causing both the loss of the pots and the crabs therein; and a broken steering computer. The Cornelia Marie limped back to Dutch Harbor with a blown head gasket that turned out to be worse than expected; parts had to be ordered from the Alaskan mainland, costing the crew time and money. The Maverick finally passed its Coast Guard inspection but stayed at Dutch Harbor due to weather conditions. Crew members on the Maverick voiced their discontent with Blake's verbal excitement about taking on the job of Captain at mid-season, and even Captain Rick Quashnick appeared skeptical. As the weather changed, the Maverick finally left Dutch Harbor to join the rest of the fleet, while the Northwestern, after heavy discussions between the Hansen brothers, decided to seek refuge from the converging storms behind Amak Island. | |||
| 13 | 3 | "On the Crab" | April 11, 2006 (2006-04-11) |
| The crews made headway in bringing crab on-board and fought even more rough weather. The Maverick dealt with two crew issues: Blake's continued trumpeting his coming rise to the captain's chair that had been verbally promised to him by Captain Quashnick during the offseason; and angry veteran crewmember Hiram, who was frustrated that the Maverick was employing a greenhorn (who was excited about seeing full pots coming aboard) while many of his own friends, crab veterans with far more experience, had been put out of work by the IFQ system. Boat Mother Donna Quashnick counseled the Maverick crew to give Hiram time to vent, and the next morning the squabble seemed forgotten as the crew returned to work. The Cornelia Marie, fresh off extensive engine repairs at Dutch Harbor, had just reached the fishing grounds and begun retrieving their pots that had been left soaking for days when the same engine threw a piston, creating even more destructive engine damage and forcing Captain Harris to take the boat back to Dutch Harbor again. The Northwestern continued their annual tradition of finding superb fishing grounds away from other boats, pulling in pots with nearly 70 crabs each on average, but when another severe storm approached the fleet, the Hansens weighed the odds of their nearly full tanks surviving the battering of an Arctic squall without serious deadloss and decided to head for the processors and cash out their load before the bad weather hit. The Rollo continued to have serious equipment issues, losing their GPS indicator in the middle of the night during a blizzard. | |||
| 14 | 4 | "Finish Line" | April 18, 2006 (2006-04-18) |
| Many of the crews, including the Northwestern and Maverick, headed to St. Paul Island to offload their northern IFQ share catches. The Northwestern catch was smaller than expected, putting Sig Hansen significantly behind on making his overall quota; however, none of the Northwestern crew voiced anything but praise for their captain's fishing instincts. Edgar Hansen, Northwestern Deck Boss and Sig's younger brother, notes that "That man has made me more money than I could wish for, and he's kept us safe while doing it—no fatalities, no major injuries, knock on wood." As the Maverick headed for the processors at St. Paul, deck boss Blake Painter hung up his deck oilskins for what he hoped would be the last time, anticipating taking over as Captain of the Maverick once the Maverick reached St. Paul Island. However, Captain Rick Quashnick began having second thoughts about leaving his ship to a new captain in the middle of a crab season, especially since the crewmember who would be interim deck boss with Blake's promotion vowed to quit rather than work for Blake. Quashnick made the difficult choice to forgo his retirement at least until the end of this King Crab season, angering Blake, who had been chasing a dream "ever since I was four years old...all I wanted to be was the captain of a red crab boat." Seeing Blake's passion for the job of captain and not merely a passion for the extra money such a job would bring impresses Hiram, who finally turns from Blake's harshest critic to one of his strongest defenders; "He'll make his mark on fishing, no doubt about it. To be so young and so mature at the same time...he'll make a fine captain." The Rollo finally catches a break in both the weather and the crab catching and started to make headway on their catching their own IFQ shares for the season when a USCG cruiser hailed the captain and announced they will be boarding for a surprise mid-season inspection. Both captain and crew on the Rollo were very nervous, especially since the 9-man inspection team essentially took over the boat for the next three hours, but finally the USCG pronounced them "in full compliance" and departed. The Northwestern returned to where they'd left pots soaking before their side trip to the processors and found all the pots full; however, their joy was cut short when one of the hydraulic arms on the launcher snapped a connector pin, rendering it useless. Sig's repair—essentially using a sledgehammer to drive in a new pin into the pneumatic cylinder—lasted all of 10 seconds; when Edgar tried to close the launcher, the connector and pin shot out of the launcher like a harpoon. The Hansens decided to risk running the launcher on one hydraulic lift and returned to pulling pots. Aboard the Aleutian Ballad, a greenhorn became so distraught by the extreme conditions of the Bering Sea that he threatened to jump off the boat right then and there and kill himself, forcing Captain Corky Tilley to return to Dutch Harbor with the young man on the edge of a nervous breakdown the entire way. An Unalaska Police Officer escorted the greenhorn personally from the dock to the airport to ensure his departure from Dutch Harbor without further incident. By the time the Aleutian Ballad returned to sea, the storm surge was more brutal than ever, and a rogue wave hit the Aleutian Ballad, knocking it nearly 90 degrees over and trashing the wheelhouse. | |||
| 15 | 5 | "Friends and Rivals" | April 25, 2006 (2006-04-25) |
| The Aleutian Ballad, knocked over by a rogue wave, managed to right itself, but with several crew members injured—including Captain Tilley's own daughter, Nicole—as well as its computer not coming back on line and the wheelhouse and deck damaged, Captain Tilley decided to return to port for repairs rather than risk more damage in the storms. Captain Phil Harris of the Cornelia Marie discussed a change in duty with his ship's greenhorn—Harris' youngest son, Jacob—and declared that Jake may finally be ready to take shifts inside the wheelhouse so that the captain can get some rest, which had been a goal of Jake's all season long. As the fishing continued at full speed aboard the Northwestern, Edgar Hansen decides to celebrate the launch of the last pot string of the season with a traditional Norwegian meal of boiled salt cod, Captain Sig's favorite dish. The Rollo dealt with a coffee crisis—down to less than half a can of grounds left, they still had a long string of pots to pull in before the end of the season, so the remaining coffee was rationed until the final pot was pulled; the crew celebrated the end of their season with the last pot of coffee left. Blake Painter, still upset about being passed over for the captain's job on the Maverick, expressed his hope that he will still get to pilot the Maverick soon, perhaps as early as the upcoming Opilio season. The Cornelia Marie, still needing to catch crab to fill its large quota, moved closer to the same grounds being fished by the Northwestern. When Sig Hansen spotted a Cornelia Marie pot off the bow, he suggested to his crew that they "mess with it" as payback for Phil Harris' pre-season comment that he would miss "beating (Sig's) ass" under the new IFQ rules. The Northwestern crew hauled the pot up—"They've got more crab than we do!" Edgar observed—then hooked fishing gloves and a pair of thong underwear to the bait hook and welded the door shut before returning the pot to the ocean. As night fell over the fishing grounds, the Cornelia Marie retrieved the pot and were mystified by the welded door as well as the "party boy" underwear in the pot; Phil Harris expressed a belief that "my fat little buddy Rick (Quashnick, of the Maverick)" pulled the prank and radioed the Maverick for confirmation. Captain Rick Quashnick denied his involvement; however, Sig listened in on the conversation over the radio and decided to call Harris and see how long it would take before Harris figured out who really pulled the prank. Once Phil figured out the truth from Sig's denials that he would ever pull such a prank—"I would never do such a thing—that would be illegal!" Sig asserted—the two men shared a laugh about the prank, but Harris got the last word by pulling a Northwestern pot and filling it with garbage, then mounting a steel pipe over part of the "shot" (rope length), which would interfere with the Northwestern retrieval block and give them a half-ton dead weight hanging off the side of the boat. As the Northwestern crew pulled their last pots up, they discovered the altered pot; Edgar figured out how to bypass the retrieval block and pull the pot aboard by the pipe around the rope. The Northwestern crew then discovered that all their crab were taken out of the pot and the pot had been refilled with garbage from the Cornelia Marie; Sig salutes his rival and gives the pipe-over-rope trick a "9" on the practical joke scale. The boats returned to Dutch Harbor to offload at the end of the season, one of the first seasons in years with no recorded deaths. | |||
| 16 | 6 | "A New Hunt Begins" | May 2, 2006 (2006-05-02) |
| The opilio crab season officially began, but a forecast for wind and heavy icing, which can make the vessels top heavy, forced many captains to wait out the storm in Dutch Harbor. As in king crab season, the Time Bandit threw caution to the wind and left early. The Rollo fished grounds long abandoned, and after a few pots with only tanner crab, which are out of season, they pulled some pots with respectable numbers of crab. The Maverick put to sea without longtime deck boss Blake Painter, who took the season off to deal with the impending death of a relative and other family issues. On the Northwestern, Captain Sig Hansen ground it out fishing for cod, which had high prices at the time, instead of fishing for crab. | |||
| 17 | 7 | "Smoke on the Water" | May 9, 2006 (2006-05-09) |
| The Maverick and the Rollo raced to offload their pots and sought refuge at St. Paul Island before a storm arrived. Concerns about the quickly expanding polar ice pack grew. Aboard the Time Bandit, bad bait made for low crab count; freshly caught bait made for better fishing. The Northwestern continued fishing for cod. The Cornelia Marie left Dutch Harbor to go crab fishing. | |||
| 18 | 8 | "Man vs. Ice" | May 16, 2006 (2006-05-16) |
| Long days and freezing temperatures frayed nerves aboard the Maverick and the Rollo. The Time Bandit dealt with ice forming on the ship. The Northwestern continued to fish for cod. | |||
| 19 | 9 | "On the Edge" | May 23, 2006 (2006-05-23) |
| The Time Bandit fished along the ice pack. The Maverick was on the crab on a secret sandbar. Bad luck continued on the Cornelia Marie. The Northwestern finally finished cod fishing and prepared to go crab fishing. | |||
| 20 | 10 | "Pribilof Stare" | May 30, 2006 (2006-05-30) |
| The Time Bandit pulled large number of crab after dealing with ice build-up along the ice pack. The Aleutian Ballad had 80 pots under the ice pack. Aboard the Maverick, the stiff arm on the block used to haul the pots from the sea broke. The Rollo continued to bring up good pots. The Northwestern brought up its first pots and a crew member is distracted by family illness at home. Aboard the Cornelia Marie, deckhand, Dave Millman, suffered an ankle injury that required them to return to St. Paul Island. | |||
| 21 | 11 | "Race Against the Ice" | June 6, 2006 (2006-06-06) |
| Long hours aboard the Northwestern caused tension between captain and crew; Captain Sig allowed the crew to rest after a series of long strings when Edgar convinced him that the men could not go on any longer, but the next morning when the weather had gotten significantly colder, Sig awoke the men after only three hours of sleep and demanded they get back to work before the ice pack caught up with them. The Northwestern crew was less than pleased with Sig's demanding fishing pace, so as a gesture of good faith, Sig left a coffee can marked "Suggestion Box" in the galley so that the crew could voice their complaints. Aboard the Rollo, the crew fudged the number of crabs caught per pot; under the IFQ system, quotas are divided between southern and northern shares, so when the Rollo arrived at processors near St. Paul Island (where the northern share processors are located) and their center tank was opened, the amount of crab in the tank were considerably over the alloted northern share and Captain Eric Nyhammer was assessed a large fine for going over quota. Eric announced to his crew that he was taking the fines out of the crew pay, since they were the ones who had miscounted the crab. As the Rollo was about to leave St. Paul to return to the southern fishing grounds, they were boarded by the Alaska Department of Commerce police and informed that under the IFQ rules, they could not leave St. Paul until they emptied all of their tanks, including one of the tanks with crab from the southern fishing grounds, which forced Eric to sell the crabs on board for under market prices. The injured crewman on the Cornelia Marie was diagnosed with a severe ankle sprain and the boat is forced to return to the fishing grounds shorthanded with Captain Phil Harris's son, greenhorn Jake, taking up the slack; the lack of a fifth man on board slowed the pace of the deck crew by almost 50%. The Maverick continued to pull full pots while fishing on a sandbar, but as the ice approached, Captain Rick decided to chance leaving the rest of the gear in place and take his northern share up to St. Paul to drop off crab rather than risk losing the crabs that had been in the tank for nearly two weeks. | |||
| 22 | 12 | "Cashing In" | June 13, 2006 (2006-06-13) |
| The Time Bandit picked up its last string of pots, with mediocre results. The Maverick lost two pots to the ice pack. The Cornelia Marie gingerly navigated through the edge of the ice pack, driving Phil Harris' blood pressure sky high, but eventually they made it back to open water. On the Rollo, large amounts of crab were brought up. Father and son had a line coiling competition on the Cornelia Marie, and Phil handily beat his son Jake. A crew member was fired from the Maverick. The boats returned to St. Paul and Dutch Harbor to offload, collected their paychecks, and reunited with their families. The Northwestern completed two successful seasons in one—cod and opilio crab—and Sig Hansen opened the "suggestion box" and read the entries with great amusement ("'Skipper takes more than one shower a month'—is that Edgar's writing?"). The Northwestern returned to its home port of Seattle and celebrated a successful season with their happy wives and children. | |||
| "Best of Season 2" | March 27, 2007 (2007-03-27) | ||
| Recap of the second season. |
Read more about this topic: List Of Deadliest Catch Episodes
Famous quotes containing the word season:
“The instincts of merry England lingered on here with exceptional vitality, and the symbolic customs which tradition has attached to each season of the year were yet a reality on Egdon. Indeed, the impulses of all such outlandish hamlets are pagan still: in these spots homage to nature, self-adoration, frantic gaieties, fragments of Teutonic rites to divinities whose names are forgotten, seem in some way or other to have survived mediaeval doctrine.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)