The Deadliest Catch captains came head-to-head with an arctic hurricane during this week’s episode of the Discovery show, and things got pretty scary pretty fast.
Some of the worst tidal surges on earth gave even experienced Summer Bay Captain “Wild Bill” Wichrowski pause in Tuesday’s episode, as he fought swells that were as high as a building.
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Surveying the bleak scene, Wild Bill said, “We got some hellacious tides coming. Oh boy. I’m just looking at how everybody is doing individually, and just keeping the waves off the boat.”
As the deck crew continues to pull up crab pots in the six seconds they got between ice-cold waves, Wild Bill tried to keep the boat from hitting every swell head-on and allow his crew to do their jobs.
When he saw that there were quite a few crab in the pots, he looked pleased: “There are a few crabs in these, looks like it’s the good stuff,” he said. “I mean, we’ve fought to get down here and, we are gonna get our a— kicked by the tides.”
The Summer Bay crew was facing the biggest tidal surges in the U.S., he revealed, with each pot retrieval being a seriously dangerous.
“Six-second intervals…every six seconds you are on top of a wave, there’s no time to recover between them,” Wild Bill said of the relentless weather.
Wild Bill wasn’t the only captain to have to deal with the rough weather during Tuesday’s episode, with Saga Captain Jake Anderson struggling to keep his boat upright in the waves.
In an exclusive interview with PopCulture.com prior to the season premiere, Anderson offered some insight as to the worst weather he’s ever seen as a captain, saying it occurred in part due to the supermoon event.
“Our tides haven’t been this strong in 150 years,” Anderson told PopCulture. “So everybody in the fleet had something new to deal with that they never have dealt with before and probably will never see in their lifetime again.”
“To basically explain it in layman’s terms,” Anderson he continued, “if the wave heights were said to be 19 feet, where I was at, I’d be about 30, 35-foot swells.”
Deadliest Catch airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Discovery. And don’t forget to watch Deadliest Catch: The Bait at 8 p.m. ET prior to the show.
Photo credit: Discovery
