'Deadliest Catch' is plenty familiar

Post date: Jul 11, 2009 4:6:22 PM

“I’ve always liked the out-of-doors, and the money sounded good, so I took his offer to go crab fishing,” Medo said. He pulled in more than he expected. Crab fishing in the rolling waters of the Bering Sea was an adventure featuring hard, monotonous work and some danger, but that also was rewarding. The danger came from falling overboard, which sometimes happens, and from the crabs themselves. Crab fishing has become a staple of television programs such as the Learning Channel’s “Deadliest Catch.” Medo enjoys watching that and other programs about crab fishing because they bring back memories of excitement, camaraderie and good money earned quickly. He said he has memories, too, of long hours on the rocking, rolling deck of 100-foot-long vessels and of little sleep. But the money was good, from $20,000 to $40,000 earned in one to two months, depending on the success of a crew’s catch. “You always wanted to sleep, to rest your body from the fatigue,” he said. Crew members work 20 hours on with four hours off to slip below and grab a brief rest. On the television shows, he sees boats he can recall from five seasons of crabbing and occasionally sees a crew member he knows. Medo is 39. He and his wife, Michelle, have three children ranging from 3 to 19 years of age. He graduated from Kearney High School in 1989 and from the University of Nebraska at Kearney in 1994.

He returned to Nebraska in 2002 to become manager of Medo’s Resort on Bullhead Point at Johnson Lake.

He went crabbing beginning in the 1990s for the November to December seasons for huge king crabs and in January for the smaller snow crabs.

The Bering Sea is seldom quiet. It’s a place of frequent storms whipping the sea into a boiling frenzy that throws deckhands to the deck. The crew has to be close to its work, so the sides of a crab fishing boat are low. The crew can catch the full force of a huge wave that crashes onto the deck.

The crabs are caught in huge box-shaped metal traps called pots that are connected by long lines and lowered as much as 400 feet to the floor of the sea. Crabs are bottom-feeders, consuming dead fish or any sea organism that reaches the bottom.

The crab meat comes from the legs, and king crabs are mean.

“They’ll grab you if they can. They have a bite that can really injure your fingers, even wearing thick gloves,” Medo said.

“I sorted bait my first year until I got my sea legs because I was a greenhorn, but gradually I did other jobs and eventually rotated my job duties.

“We’d go out for two weeks, then go back out again. One year, we loaded our catch onto a corporate boat and didn’t get a break, but I don’t think they do that anymore.”

For the crew, and especially the boat captain, the moment of excitement is when the huge traps are pulled on board and each trap dumps its catch onto a table to be sorted and counted.

The crews don’t keep everything they catch. Fish can get caught in the traps. Female and juvenile crabs are thrown away. The males are measured,, then are shoved into a holding tank with circulating sea water.

Three huge photographs line the wall in the bar of the resort at Johnson Lake as reminders of what he once did.

“I was excited to come back to the resort.” He spoke somewhat wistfully as he said Johnson Lake sometimes reminds him of his crabbing days. “When it gets cold and windy, and the fog comes rolling in off the lake, I think about what it was like. I know I’ll never do it again.”