A Huge Cargo Ship Made A Huge Mess For Deadliest Catch's Jake Anderson
When you are a captain of a ship on the Bering Sea, you can do everything right all the time and still end up on the wrong side of a situation — and that's exactly what happened to Captain Jake Anderson. Anderson captains The Saga and is a regular character on "Deadliest Catch" — making his debut as a greenhorn on season 3 aboard the Northwestern. He would eventually appear in over 200 episodes and take the helm of The Saga in later seasons.
During an episode of "Deadliest Catch," Anderson was retrieving a string of pots during black cod season when he noticed a massive cargo ship on the horizon — which he notes can be a common occurrence when fishing close to the islands off the coast of Alaska. For the most part, these ships don't cause many issues – but when Anderson radioed the ship and warned them that they were heading toward some of The Saga's fishing gear — he got no response. That's cause for concern.
The massive cargo ship ignored Anderson's warning and severed the line of a pot
Anderson had warned them to avoid the string of pots he and his crew had laid, and explicitly asked them to watch out for any buoys in the area — but the cargo ship ended up traveling directly over the fishing grounds anyway, severing the buoys from a string of pots. Captain Anderson was not happy about the situation and shared his frustration with his crew over the ship's loudspeaker, "The buoys are fire engine red, how the f— did you do that?"
Anderson was already in a tight situation, as he mentions earlier in the episode — he needs to make his quota of black cod or he will be forfeiting his boat — so when he loses the buoys for the string of pots, he needs to figure out how to find them on the ocean floor.
Even without the buoys, Anderson still has a good idea of where his pots are laying on the sea floor through GPS and mapping — but in order to get to pot back on board, they'll need to drop a huge hook and drag it along the ocean floor in hopes of snagging the string of pots to be hoisted back up. The pots are a staggering 1,600 feet below the surface of the Bering Sea, and the string of pots is spread out over a mile — all those factors weigh against Anderson and his crew as they fashion the grappling hook to thousands of feet of rope and start the slow journey of dragging the hook along the line of pots.
The experienced captain and crew were able to fish the pot out of the Bering Sea
The Saga will need to run along the string of pots at a slow speed and hope that their newly fashioned grappling hook snags the line or one of the pots — if it doesn't, they will need to turn around and attempt another pass along the line. "I have to be very careful as I stay on top of this and drag. I don't just want to take it out of gear, let the wind and waves take me, and then hope it hooks up," Anderson said, with irritation in his voice.
The captain will know when his line gets anchored to the line of pots because the ship's speed will drastically slow down or even stop — indicating that the hook has snagged something and has secured itself on the sea floor. After a relatively short time from when Anderson put his plan into action, he notices that his ship has started to slow down. "Check it, I might have something... try to pull it in," Anderson radios down to his crew nervously.
And after pulling the hook up from 1,600 feet below the surface — the crew noticed that it indeed had something attached — the lost pots had been found and were brought on board. The crew instantly erupted in celebration — knowing that this score could save their season and the boat itself. The haul from the missing pots was also something to celebrate, with each pot landing around 250 fish, a seemingly good score by the captain and crew's reaction.