Get ready for Season 4!

If you’ve not yet caught up on Seasons 1, 2 and 3 be sure to grab yourself the DVD sets from Amazon - they’re only between $16-$22 for an entire season, so its dirt cheap - not to mention crystal clear and without commercials. What more could you ask for?

Take a quick look around the Deadliest Catch Shop and stock up before Season 4 airs on April 15th!

It’s official - Season 4 of Deadliest Catch will premiere on Tuesday, April 15th at 9pm.  It will be a two-fer - with two back-to-back episodes running from 9pm through 11pm.  Seems like forever since the last season ended, but now we’re so, so close to the new episodes - I can’t wait!

Here are some Deadliest Catch video clips from YouTube to keep all us fans busy while we’re waiting for Season Four to beign (tentatively scheduled for April 2008). Enjoy!

Nice little interview with Sig Hansen from the New Zealand Herald:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1501119/story.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=10466299

Tonight’s Show

They risk dying to make a living. Fishermen from the reality smash “Deadliest Catch,” storm chasers and more. Inside America’s most dangerous jobs with video you won’t believe.

Tonight on Larry King Live, on CNN. 

Just a peculiar article today that caught my eye from The Scotsman:

Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch is one of the only things ’safe’ for Guantanamo prisoners to watch

I wonder who’s Al-Qaida’s favorite skipper - Sig or Phil? 

A couple of folks have sent in questions or posted comments asking if and when Season Four of Deadliest Catch will be airing on the Discovery Channel.  At first I heard rumors about an October 2007 return with new episodes, but now it sounds like it may be March of April 2008, according to the Daily News:

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/2007/06/18/2007-06-18_inner_tube.html

Either way, it sounds like Discovery’s made the right choice and has ordered another action-packed season from Original Productions.  If this last season is anything to go by, these guys still have lots of new tricks up their sleeve.  The deep-sea submersible camera, which apparently didn’t work out very well in season 3 because of inclement weather, may make another appearance, providing some dramatic shots of the ocean floor and crab in their natural habitat.  Or the producers and camera crew may figure out some great new way to film a shot… they already use chaser boats, gimbled-cameras on helicopters… heck, they even strap themselves onto hydraulic cranes and lay suspended 30 feet out from the boat just to get a good shot of the deck.  (My personal favorite was the CrabberCam - where they attached a small camera to a skateboard helmet and had one of the deckhands wear it while he worked… you really got a feel for the fisherman’s-eye-view of things.)

Anyway, the important thing is YES, Virginia… there will be a Season Four!  The big questions now are, which boats and captains will be featured?  Phil and Sig are shoo-ins, and it looks like the Time Bandit Brothers will probably stick around.  The Maverick will probably stay in, just so we can see Blake in his transition from deckhand to greenhorn-captain to full-fledged captain.  But what about the others?   I’m not crazy about the Farwest Leader, though I do have a soft-spot in my heart for Ragnhild… the boat I really miss though is the Rollo.  Eric was always good for a snarky comment or a subtle witticism, and his crew was constantly pulling pranks for the camera.  Maybe the production guys thought they were trying too hard to make “good television”?  Who knows.  But of all the captains I always liked Eric, just as much as Sig or Phil, if only because he seemed like he was cut from a different cloth… a little cleaner and more refined, younger and with a more laid back management style.  He provided a nice contrast with the other salty-dog captains. 

So far, Season 3 has been, in my opinion, the best season yet. With breathtaking film angles to daring rescues, I’ve been on the edge of my seat all season.

Here is the recap of the episodes past and the next few left in the season.

Season 3 Aired Episodes:

1. A Tragic Beginning
2. The Unforgiving Sea
3. Pain and Paybacks
4. Cheating Death
5. The Last Lap
6. New Beginnings
7. Caught in the Storm
8. Crossing the Line

Season 3 Episodes Left to Air:

1. Trials of the Greenhorns (June 5, 2007)
2. Ice and Open Water (June 12, 2007)
3. A Frozen Finish (June 19, 2007)

A crab boat that spent nearly four decades in the Bering Sea will begin a second life as a tourist attraction in Ketchikan later this month.

For a fee, visitors to the Southeastern port can get a tour of the fishing vessel Sea Star, which appeared on the first season of the Discovery Channel’s “Deadliest Catch” before the boat was retired from the crab fishery following crab rationalization in 2005.

“The show is very popular–we get quite a few people coming down to the docks here in Seattle wanting to see a crab boat,” said Sea Star owner Larry Hendricks, a retired crab fisherman who now works as a consultant for the production company that films “Deadliest Catch.” “So it just made common sense to look at the possibility of making it a tourist attraction and promote the Alaskan crab fishery.”

Sea Star Tours is a joint project between Hendricks and Gary Stewart, the captain of the retired vessel Polar Lady, which also appeared on the first season of “Deadliest Catch.” Many of the series’ current stars, including the captains of the Northwestern, the Cornelia Marie and the Maverick, are investors in the business, and Hendricks said they’ll occasionally drop in on the Sea Star tours to talk with their fans.

“They’ll be working their regular vessels also, but we’ll be flying them up to Ketchikan to make guest appearances,” he said.

The Sea Star venture is the latest example of how the success of “Deadliest Catch” has reverberated throughout the Alaskan crab business. The Aleutian Ballad, a crab boat appearing on the current season of the show, is also running a tourism operation out of Ketchikan aimed at cruise ship passengers. Both the Northwestern and the Cornelia Marie now offer merchandise for sale on their websites. Hendricks said those products will also be among the offerings in the Sea Star’s onboard gift shop, which will also feature its own souvenirs.

The Sea Star is in Seattle now, but Hendricks hopes to sail it up to Ketchikan by May 20.

Source

The Discovery Channel did a interview with Jeff Conroy, Co-Executive Producer of Deadliest Catch to get an inside perspective of what goes on during filming and get a short look at the upcoming Season 3 of Deadliest Catch.

The interview with Jeff Conroy:

Q: You’ve been producing Deadliest Catch since the series debuted. What do you think makes the series so compelling? What keeps bringing viewers back?

A: I think it’s a combination of things. There’s obviously the compelling nature of watching guys risk their lives in what are real life-and-death situations. There’s the financial stake. Each pot coming up is like pulling the handle of a slot machine — you just have to see what is in it. And finally, I think it’s the characters. They are fathers, sons and husbands who have good days and bad days. But, unfortunately for them, their bad days can have serious consequences.

Q: What characteristics do you look for in the fishermen you profile?

A: I look for straight shooters — guys who are willing to put it all out there, warts and all. It’s boring watching someone who’s perfect, always happy and easy to get along with. I’d much rather see someone who’s willing to tell you they did well one day and they screwed up the next. I’m also looking for people who don’t care about the cameras, which kind of goes along with the straight-shooter characteristic.

Q: What characteristics do you look for in the camera operators you hire?

A: When hiring camera crew, I look for durability and a good story sense. Unlike any other show I have worked on, toughness outranks camerawork as a quality I look for — if you can’t hack it, you aren’t going to get the story no matter how good of a cameraperson you are on land. This job is not for everyone. You’re exhausted the entire time, your camera equipment will fail, your characters can be hostile, and the conditions are ruthless. The producers and camerapeople who are successful have the intuition to follow compelling stories while operating in the worst conditions imaginable for filming a show.

Q: What are some of the most dangerous or frightening encounters you’ve personally experienced while filming Deadliest Catch?

A: Hmmm … is my wife reading this? The longest I have been out for is a week, so I’m a novice compared to most of my crew, but I had a couple moments where I had to reevaluate what the hell I was doing. One time, when I was filming from the bow of the Cornelia Marie, I looked down to fix the plastic bag around my camera and right at that same moment the crane hook slipped out of Dan’s hands up on the stack. I didn’t even see it coming as it skimmed my head. I was lucky it didn’t knock me out, but it did knock some sense into me. Another time, I was leaning over the rail to get a shot of the oncoming waves when Capt. Phil (Harris) yelled, “Jeff, get the hell out of there!” I moved and a big wave crashed on the deck. I’m sure each one of my crew has a list of stories better than these.

Q: How many camera people are on each boat? How many cameras are mounted on each boat and where are they located?

A: There are two to three camera operators/producers on each boat. We have two fixed cameras mounted on the deck to capture the action at the rail, we have a camera on the captain, and then we may at any given time quick-mount another camera to capture a free-run time lapse or an angle our fixed cameras can’t see.

Q: How many cameras have been damaged during the course of filming the series, and how have they been ruined?

A: Oh god. You should ask the accounting department. We lose almost every one of our cameras that we use out on deck. If they make it through the season, you would never want to use them again anyway. The salt and the moisture are deadly, and there’s a good chance that the operator fell on the camera at least once. Do not buy a used camera from us.

Q: Is crab fishing still as dangerous as it was before the quota system was mandated during the second season?

A: I have gotten this question before and the answer is yes, of course. In my opinion, the risks have increased for the boats that have survived the downsizing of the fleet simply because they are on the Bering Sea much longer than before the quota system. The Bering Sea hasn’t changed, and they still try to fish as fast as humanly possible.

Q: What can viewers expect to see during the new season of Deadliest Catch?

A: Tragedy, triumph and some great characters trying to make their way in the deadliest job in the world.

Source