Season 3
| Series # | Season # | Title | Original airdate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 23 | 1 | "A Tragic Beginning" | April 3, 2007 (2007-04-03) |
| The boats prepare for the start of the king crab season. On board the Cornelia Marie, last season's greenhorn, Jake Harris, got a promotion to deckhand; the vessel's new greenhorn is Joshua Harris, Jake's older brother and Phil's eldest son. The new hand on board the Northwestern is Stan Hansen, cousin to the Hansen brothers; meanwhile, the Farwest Leader brings Ragnhild Moncrief, the captain's wife, aboard as their new greenhorn/cook/den mother. The Maverick is now under Blake Painter's control, and his crew is virtually all friends of his who are King-crab greenhorns, with only one experienced deck hand acting as Deck Boss. The crews go shopping for their season's crew provisions, spending around $5500 each trip. At the pre-season captains' dinner, Johnathan Hillstrand proposed a derby-style competition between the boats: Fewest number of pots needed to pull 100,000 pounds of crab. Sig Hansen upped the ante by proposing each captain kick in $100 for the prize to be given to the winner, and the UniSea Bar agreed to safeguard the $900 bounty. After dinner, the Hansen brothers decided to initiate the first pranks of the season by leaving a bag of bait fish under the Captain's chair on board the Maverick. The Cornelia Marie left Dutch Harbor hoping to catch a break between two storms, leaving the other boats to ride out the storms tied to the dock. The Northwestern tried a new strategy of more and bigger crab pots, carrying 150 pots on the initial trip out to the grounds, then returning to Dutch Harbor for 150 more pots afterwards as a way of capturing their very large quota shares at a faster pace. Several captains explained their strategies for setting crab pots in the Bering Sea—Sig Hansen looks at history, checks the official Alaska Fish and Game reports, then sets test pots for long soaks and evaluates patterns of crab caught in the test pots; Wizard Captain Keith Colburn tries to determine the best balance between history and state reports, noting that many captains spend time "chasing last year's crab" and not enough time doing test pot launching and trend watching; Cornelia Marie Captain Phil Harris noted that when the water is warmer, crabs move northward, but when the water is colder overall, crabs tend to stay in the shallows and it can be hard to determine how shallow is too shallow. Rookie Captain Blake Painter of the Maverick, who had been very confident during the captains' dinner about being able to find the crab on his own, became indecisive about where to drop his pots once the Maverick reached the fishing grounds and spent most of the first day out at sea "radio crabbing"—calling other captains on the radio for tips on where they were finding crab—which annoyed several of the veterans who had cautioned Blake against this very thing. During the first night, the Ocean Challenger capsized and put out a distress call, and by dawn, only one of the four crewmembers was found in a survival suit. | |||
| 24 | 2 | "The Unforgiving Sea" | April 10, 2007 (2007-04-10) |
| The search for the crew of the Ocean Challenger continued by air and by the USCGC Munro. The bodies of two crewmembers, without survival suits, were recovered, while the fourth crewmember was lost to the sea. The survivor, Kevin Ferrell, tells his story to the Coast Guard. The fleet reacted to the loss of the Ocean Challenger. The Northwestern set its second load of 150 pots while dealing with a broken hose on the hydraulic launchers. Deck boss Edgar Hansen committed the karmic faux pas of estimating their catch before it's pulled. The Time Bandit finally set its pots using herring instead of cod for hanging bait with poor results. After a slow start, the Maverick pulled in full pots and returned to St. Paul to offload. The Cornelia Marie fished through the night at a fast pace. Rough seas on the Farwest Leader made greenhorn Ragnhild sick, but she pulled through and worked the deck after losing a bet on the number of crab pulled up in the first pot of the season; although she started out at the bait station loading bait buckets for pots, she gradually got over her fear of the snapping king crab to move to the sorting table and assist in the crab sort and count process. | |||
| 25 | 3 | "Pain and Paybacks" | April 17, 2007 (2007-04-17) |
| The Northwestern had bad luck with its second string of 150 pots and decided to fish closer to its first set of pots where they had better luck. Northwestern deckhand Matt Bradley finally confessed to Captain Sig Hansen that he was due to be in court before the official end of the season for an outstanding criminal case that could land him up to eight months in jail; Sig chastised Matt for waiting so long to tell him of this important deadline, reminding him that there was no way to predict when the boat would catch enough to reach its quota. Rough seas caused a crewmember aboard the Wizard to have his finger crushed between two pots, which required professional medical attention at Dutch Harbor, a return to port which Captain Keith Colburn admitted was going to cost the crew thousands of dollars in lost fishing time but was necessary to avoid costing crew member Lenny Lekanoff his finger. When the Time Bandit pulled in low crab counts after having to move their greenhorn to the rail due to an injury to veteran crewmember Russ Newberry, the Hillstrand brothers decided to have a little fun at the expense of the greenhorn with a "flour pot"—a pot with several trash bags full of flour tied to the rope, which would burst when pulled up through the hydraulic block; the trick worked to perfection as greenhorn Nate put the sabotaged pot's rope into the blocks, only to be covered in exploding white powder seconds later. Captain Blake Painter of the Maverick received a tip on a hot spot to fish from Captain Phil Harris of the Cornelia Marie, but Phil made him promise not to share it with anyone else; however, Blake decided to share the tip with Captain Corky Tilley of the Aleutian Ballad as a sign that he was willing to give information and not merely take it from other captains, not realizing that Phil was listening in on the same communication band Blake was using. An annoyed Phil got his revenge on Blake's betrayal by sabotaging one of the Maverick's pots, doing a variation on the Northwestern welded door trick: The Cornelia Marie crew emptied all the crab out of the pot ("Thanks, Blake!" crew members declared on-camera as they put 50-something keepers in their tanks), put Cornelia Marie bait boxes into the pot, welded the door shut, turned the pot around backwards and re-strung the "bridle" (the loop to which the pot shots are tied for retrieval) through the welded door, then relaunched the pot, with Phil declaring "That's how you {#bleep#} with somebody, Cornelia Marie style". The Farwest Leader had declining numbers of crabs in their pots, leading Captain Greg Moncrief to challenge his wife Ragnhild Moncrief to pick a better spot for fishing; Ragnhild picked a spot to the northwest of their current position, and was rewarded with a number of full pots pulled in return, prompting the crew to dub her "Captain Ragny". The Farwest Leader crew painted a grappling hook bright pink in honor of Ragnhild's increasing confidence in crabbing, and she got to toss the hook to retrieve one of the pots, snagging the line on her second try. The Cornelia Marie broke off a part of one her propellers and went to King Cove for emergency repairs. | |||
| 26 | 4 | "Cheating Death" | April 24, 2007 (2007-04-24) |
| The fishing aboard the Northwestern was excellent and the crew filled their tanks to the brim, though the repetitive nature of fishing 300 pots became exhausting for the crew; on their way to another string of pots, Captain Sig Hansen and his crew discussed whether or not to take a break, with the decision by Sig to keep going, leaving Edgar to comment, "If Sig had any people skills, they were lost long ago. Only thing that keeps us going is the money." A replacement propeller was flown in for the Cornelia Marie, but repairs were delayed because the propeller is left handed, while the Cornelia Marie's propellers are right handed. Several days later, a second propeller arrived and is installed, allowing the boat to return to fishing, but not before Captain Phil Harris discovered his blood pressure was up in the 180/120 range; when Phil discovered that Jake and Josh had been charging shopping at Dutch Harbor to Phil's accounts, he cut off credit for both of them and blew his stack at them for spending his money so indiscriminately after Phil had just spent thousands of dollars on boat repairs. Jake and Josh both shrugged off Phil's anger, and Jake gave the captain a back massage as a peace offering. Aboard the Maverick, Captain Blake Painter fabricated a temporary fix for a broken dog on the pot launcher, then retrieved their sabotaged pot moments later; Blake declared the prank pot "lame". On their way to Akutan to offload, Blake spotted a Cornelia Marie pot and decided to take revenge by sabotaging the pot with backwards bridles and garbage offloads, but it caused little reaction on the Cornelia Marie when they retrieved it. On the Farwest Leader, a junior deckhand at the hydraulic controls caused an accident after failing to secure a pot and then broke the crane line, leaving Captain Greg Moncrief to comment to his wife that such accidents were why it was not safe to stand around the sorting tables while the pots were being emptied onto it. After poor results with their test pots, the Time Bandit pulled all their pots out of their current fishing grounds, changed strategy, and moved north. On the way to the northern end of the fishing grounds, Captain Johnathan Hillstrand observed a deckhand on another boat tying a pot stack off the side of another vessel, the Trailblazer. After the crew of the Time Bandit headed below for some rest, the man tying the stack was overwhelmed by the 30-foot swells and disappeared into the waves. Captain Hillstrand and his crew worked quickly to save the fisherman who fell into the sea. Their quick action saved the man from certain death, and the fisherman was overjoyed by the swift rescue efforts of the Time Bandit and her crew. Johnathan and the rescued fisherman were both overwhelmed with emotions after the rescue—ten years earlier, the Time Bandit had rescued a fishing boat crew in a similar situation but was unable to save one of the fishermen, and the memory had haunted the Hillstrands for years afterward; with this successful save, the Hillstrand brothers said they felt they had finally settled the score with the past for the loss of that fisherman. | |||
| 27 | 5 | "Bering Sea Salvation" | May 1, 2007 (2007-05-01) |
| Good fortune smiled upon the Time Bandit after the rescue of the man overboard as they pulled up very full pots in a once-in-a-lifetime season. The Northwestern continued to have good luck after offloading nearly $800,000 in crab, though deckhand Matt Bradley was continuing to struggle with the uncertainty about making his upcoming court date. Edgar Hansen painted prison stripes on Matt's oilskins as payback for Matt's continued complaints about not wanting to spend Christmas in jail—"don't do the crime if you don't want to do the time," Edgar reminded the deckhand. Aboard the Maverick, Captain Blake Painter decided to risk striking out on his own and picked a spot to fish without any advice from other captains, resulting in full pots. Lenny, the injured engineer aboard the Wizard, returned to work the deck for the last strings. The Farwest Leader pulled up empty pots, but pulled up decent pots after receiving a tip from Johnathan Hillstrand on the Time Bandit. | |||
| 28 | 6 | "The Last Lap" | May 8, 2007 (2007-05-08) |
| The boats rushed to pull up their last pots in order to meet their delivery deadlines at the processing plants. The Farwest Leader had one of their best seasons ever, and Raghnild Moncrief celebrated getting over her fear of the big king crabs by holding up one of the biggest crabs for the cameras during the offload at Akutan. Sig Hansen, knowing that the price of king crab will go down in a day, rushed the Northwestern to Akutan to empty its tanks, pulling in over $1M for his quota shares; more importantly, by getting to port ahead of schedule, Matt Bradley was able to catch a plane that night back to Seattle to avoid missing his court date. Captain Johnathan Hillstrand of the Time Bandit won the bet between the captains on the fewest pots pulled to 100,000 lbs. by averaging 70 crabs per pot; upon receiving his prize at the UniSea Bar, Johnathan donated a portion of the money to the Seafarer's Memorial fund, and Captain Keith Colburn of the Wizard matched it. The Maverick, which had been ahead in the crab-per-pot race the entire season until the Time Bandit went on their hot streak, "rail dumped" several pots thinking that they had reached their quota, only to find out they were actually 4,000 lbs. under quota when they offloaded at Kodiak. Blake was very upset and confused by his miscalculation of the load, and, since he was not returning for Opilio season, would have to wait to have a shot at redemption. | |||
| 29 | 7 | "New Beginnings" | May 15, 2007 (2007-05-15) |
| The fleet began the opilio crab season. Northwestern deckhand Matt Bradley, who made his Seattle court date in time to avoid a lengthy jail sentence, returned to the Northwestern crew with his legal troubles behind him. The Northwestern added a new crew member, greenhorn Jake Anderson, from a multi-generational Norwegian fishing family, anxious to prove himself "a man" aboard the most respected ship in the fleet; Sig refused to greet him, as is his tradition with greenhorns. The Wizard also picked up a new greenhorn, Nick, to learn from greenhorn Crosby. After taking on Jake, the Northwestern went to pick up their pots stored near St. Paul Island and St. George Island and found that many of their buoys had been damaged by playful sea lions. The Time Bandit, captained by Andy Hillstrand, headed to a secret opilio fishing spot known only to the Hillstrand family. Out at sea, the Northwestern crew celebrated Matt Bradley's return to the boat by burning the prison-striped oilskins they made for him during King crab season; Sig was in a considerably less celebratory mood, noting to the cameras that as far as he was concerned, he had done Matt a huge favor by getting him back in time to go to court in the first place, adding that Matt needed to show some respect and gain some maturity. At Dutch Harbor, the Farwest Leader loaded up on provisions while waiting for the Coast Guard to conduct their inspections and drills. The fish processing boat Stellar Sea's engine room caught on fire, causing it to be towed to Dutch Harbor for repairs. The fire forced the Cornelia Marie and the Time Bandit to change their plans as they were contracted to deliver to the Stellar Sea. Captain Phil Harris of the Cornelia Marie decided to dock at St. Paul to wait until the stricken Stellar Sea was repaired, while Captain Andy Hillstrand of the Time Bandit decided to switch to fishing bairdi crab which could be delivered to another processor. A Coast Guard HH-60 Jayhawk from USCG Air Station Kodiak was dispatched to rescue a seriously ill crew member from a fishing boat. | |||
| 30 | 8 | "Caught in the Storm" | May 22, 2007 (2007-05-22) |
| The fleet dealt with a storm. The Time Bandit continued to fish for bairdi with poor results. The Farwest Leader loaded aboard 30 more pots at St. George, departed before the storm hit, and went fishing for bairdi crab. Aboard the Northwestern, the crew thought their luck had changed when they pulled up full pots, but a mechanical problem with the engine forced them to go to St. Paul for repairs. The Stellar Sea was repaired and the Cornelia Marie went out to fish. The Wizard headed to port for repairs after a wave sheared the gears in the transmission of the forward crane. | |||
| 31 | 9 | "Crossing the Line" | May 29, 2007 (2007-05-29) |
| The Northwestern pulled up full pots as the crew tried to make up for lost time. Although the Northwestern greenhorn, Jake, was becoming more accepted by the crew due to his eagerness to learn and his rapidly advancing skills, he learned the hard way that playing pranks on the deck boss is never a good idea; in response to Jake's snapping him with a spring-loaded bait hook, Edgar Hansen used cable ties to wrap Jake's oilskins into a compact bundle, causing Jake to be late getting back out on deck for the next pot run. The deck crew of the Cornelia Marie and Time Bandit were battered by huge waves. Captain Keith Colburn handed over the Wizard to his brother, Monte, after having to return home due to a family emergency. The boat also picked up a new greenhorn—Guy, a former rodeo cowboy—after greenhorn Nick injured himself and had to leave the boat, but greenhorn Guy found the work difficult. A wave caused a line to tangle around the starboard shaft of the Time Bandit, forcing the boat to return to port for repairs. | |||
| 32 | 10 | "Trials of the Greenhorns" | June 5, 2007 (2007-06-05) |
| In rough seas and cold weather that causes ice to build up, greenhorn Guy on the Wizard hit his breaking point and walked off the deck, leaving the rest of the crew to pick up his duties. Guy complained about a lack of respect from the crew and that there was "no call" for taunts that he "pushes like a girl" from the more experienced crew members, but Captain Monte chastised him that walking off the deck signaled that Guy was a "quitter" who "couldn't handle the job" he'd volunteered to do one day earlier. The other greenhorn on the Wizard, Crosby, was amazed by Guy's retreat: "He didn't even last 24 hours! Come on—you can do anything for 24 hours!" The Cornelia Marie hurried to pull up her pots before a severe storm with gale-force winds was due to hit. While pulling full pots, but with mostly rejects, the Farwest Leader's port engine broke, forcing the crew to shut down the engine and chain the shaft so that the propeller turning from the force of the water itself would not burn out the drive shaft. Captain Moncrief of the Farwest Leader decided to continue fishing with one engine, but switched from fishing bairdi to opilio crab. Pulling full pots that were set back on the same spot inspired Captain Sig Hansen of the Northwestern to swap jobs with his brother Edgar and work the deck, something he had not done for over twenty years; each man lasted only a short time at the other's job before both admitting they'd rather be in their regular slots, and switched places once more after Sig successfully pulled fifteen pots. Meanwhile, the Northwestern greenhorn Jake tried to prove himself by working the rail under "Sig Rules"—that is, every miss cost him an article of clothing—and successfully pulled in a string of thirteen pots, though his many misses resulted in him wearing little more than a sweatshirt and long johns by its completion; Jake's willingness to continue learning to throw the hook and retrieve pots earned him respect from both Sig and Edgar. However, Jake then pushed it too far and then learned a lesson on fishing "old school style" with no hydraulics and no automated conveyer belts transporting crab to the tanks after Edgar heard him complaining about his aching hands. At Dutch Harbor, Captain Andy Hillstrand cleared a tangled line from the shaft of the Time Bandit. While the work was being done, greenhorn Nate was arrested for an outstanding warrant by the Unalaska Police and taken to jail; Johnathan and the rest of the crew headed for the nearest ATM to withdraw enough cash to pay Nate's bail so that he could return to fishing. | |||
| 33 | 11 | "Ice and Open Water" | June 12, 2007 (2007-06-12) |
| After heading north to scout for the January pack ice—and having Edgar leave snow angels and the Northwestern logo on one of the larger floes of pack ice they encountered—Captain Sig Hansen of the Northwestern hurried southward to pull his pots before the pack ice reached them. The disgruntled greenhorn Guy on the Wizard realized that it was not fair to his shipmates to stay inside, while the rest of the crew froze outside, chipping ice from the boat, so he returned to work. The increasingly cold weather and long working hours affected the Northwestern greenhorn, Jake, and he reached his breaking point, leading to a rare "pep talk" of sorts from Sig, which reminded Jake to keep focused on his goals. Fishing on one engine slowed the Farwest Leader, but the boat brought up full pots. However, the captain's decision to carefully sort the crab caused the deck boss, Chilly, to become grumpy, forcing Captain Greg Moncrief to have to face-to-face discipline with Chilly. Captain Andy Hillstrand turned over the Time Bandit to his brother Johnathan after an emergency required Andy to return to his horse farm in Indiana. With Johnathan at the helm, the boat pulled up huge numbers of crab, and the crew restacked the gear in preparation for the end of the season after successfully retrieving their quota. Aboard the Cornelia Marie, greenhorn Josh gained new respect for tossing the hook and working the rail after he discovered it is not as easy as it looks. On the Farwest Leader, greenhorn Raghnild cut her hand in the galley and Deck Boss Chilly hurried downstairs with Captain Greg to help her; the distracted crew failed to notice that the launch signal had not been given and launched a crab pot. Unintended launches often cause pots to get accidentally dragged under fishing vessels due to the captain not being able to steer the boat away from the waves near the launch position; when Captain Greg discovered the launch, he had his crew keelhaul a line from bow to stern to confirm that no pots had gotten tangled underneath. Meanwhile, the Time Bandit quickly made up time lost due to their own tangled pot line and headed for St. Paul for their final offload, only to run headlong into the dangerous January pack ice. | |||
| 34 | 12 | "A Frozen Finish" | June 19, 2007 (2007-06-19) |
| The Time Bandit carefully made its way through the pack ice to the processing boat Independence at St. Paul Island. As the boat tried to leave St. Paul, it ran into too much ice and was forced to return to St. Paul and spend a tense night near the beach where the Alaskan Monarch ran aground in 1990 in the same conditions. As the pack ice tightened and bay rollers began shoving the boat toward the beach during the changing of the tide, Captain Johnathan Hillstrand sounded the emergency alarms to awaken his crew and ordered all of them to take ice watches—including going down into the holds to watch the ship's walls for puncture marks from the huge ice floes—as he struggled to find a way back to open water. By dawn, the Time Bandit finally spotted open water and made their way out of the remaining pack ice; the ship's hull was creased and dented but remained intact, and the Time Bandit headed back to Dutch Harbor. Aboard the Wizard, greenhorn Guy continued to lag behind and left the deck for the second time after being reprimanded by the captain, angrily cursing out the captain and crew and quitting the job for good, voicing his intention to "jump off the boat" as soon as they returned to Dutch Harbor. After greenhorn Crosby picked up the slack left by Guy's defection, Captain Monte Colburn decided to give him a 0.5% bonus out of his own share. The Farwest Leader had a lot of deadloss due to their bad engine slowing their pace—some of their crab had been in the hold for 14 days—but still managed to have a good season. Greenhorn Ragnhild Moncrief of the Farwest Leader decided that there was no place on a crab boat for a woman because there were so few jobs women could do, and declared she felt as if she had been a "wasted space" the entire season despite her notable contributions to the season's success. Aboard the Cornelia Marie, Captain Phil Harris and his two sons had their annual line coiling contest and the surprise winner was Josh, the boat's greenhorn. The Cornelia Marie had a record-breaking season, catching over one million pounds of crab. The Northwestern packed her holds full of crab—including dumping their entire sea water load to make more room for their last pots of crab—and once again won the dollars earned title, but then busted a hydraulic line on their crane as they worked to restack their last pots. After offloading at Akutan, the Northwestern crew decided that greenhorn Jake had earned the boat jacket that was his goal for the season, and Captain Sig Hansen gave Jake the jacket off his back and finally gave him the long-overdue greeting and praise for his work, adding that the jacket didn't make Jake a man, but "it does make you cool!" The Northwestern returned to Puget Sound at the end of the opilio season and were greeted by happy family members. | |||
| 35 | "Deadliest Catch: Behind The Scenes" | June 26, 2007 (2007-06-26) | |
| Behind the scenes on the making of season 3. | |||
| 36 | "Best of Season 3" | April 15, 2008 (2008-04-15) | |
| Recap of the third season. |
Read more about this topic: List Of Deadliest Catch Episodes
Famous quotes containing the word season:
“To the American People:MChristmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind. To cherish peace and good will, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas. If we think on these things, there will be born in us a Savior and over us will shine a star sending its gleam of hope to the world.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)