Deadliest Catch Captain Jake Anderson‘s desperate push to fill his king crab quota had a bloody speed bump when deck boss Sean Dunlop managed to stab himself in the ribs with his own knife.
In Tuesday’s all-new episode of the Discovery docuseries, the Saga captain and crew were alerted something had gone wrong by Dunlop’s shouts, finding the veteran fisherman covered in blood below deck.
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“I gotta keep pressure on this thing right now,” Dunlop shouted at Anderson, who leaped into action grabbing first aid equipment to staunch the flow of blood while Dunlop was rushed to the infirmary with the fear of possible internal bleeding.
“He took one of these knives and stuck it in his jacket pocket,” a crew member explained of the tense scene once things had quieted down. “He bent over, and he jabbed himself in the side with it.”
With six stitches in his side and pumped full of antibiotics, Dunlop did end up returning to the boat, but with such a deep wound, Anderson wasn’t sure if he would be able to get back to work catching the remaining 80,000 lbs. of king crab they needed.
“He’s a huge part of the boat,” the Saga captain worried to the camera. “I [lose] Sean and my whole operation suffers. I don’t know if he can work, and I have still have a whole season to go. …I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I need to get back out there. It’s full throttle or nothing.”
In the end, Dunlop promised to fight through the pain to help his captain, trying to become a “top competitor” this season and buy in as an owner of the Saga.
“If you say you’re a crabber โ a Bering Sea crabber โ that means you’ve done your 6-month seasons, your ice seasons; you’ve seen sinking boats; you’ve seen dead people; you’ve lost friends,” Anderson explained. “You’ve got stabbed; you’ve got beat; you’ve got kicked; you’ve got scratched, and you kept on to the last tick.”
Deadliest Catch airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Discovery.
Photo credit: Discovery