Dirty Jobs“Floating Fish Factory”
Original Air Date: April 21, 2008
Stacy –Two Cents Reviewer
It’s Alaska Week on the Discovery Channel, and what better way to kick it off than with a brand new episode of Dirty Jobs! Unfortunately, my dream crossover episode of Dirty Jobs and the Deadliest Catch did not happen, but we did get the next best thing. Okay, the next, next best thing, as Mike already narrates Deadliest Catch. Instead, this week Mike and the crew get some first hand experience cod fishing in the Bering Sea. And, it may not be as glamorous a job as catching crab, but as Mike puts it best, “Wherever there is danger, there is always dirt.” Oh boy is there dirt.
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Dirty Jobs
ReplyDelete“Floating Fish Factory”
Original Air Date: April 21, 2008
Stacy –Two Cents Reviewer
It’s Alaska Week on the Discovery Channel, and what better way to kick it off than with a brand new episode of Dirty Jobs! Unfortunately, my dream crossover episode of Dirty Jobs and the Deadliest Catch did not happen, but we did get the next best thing. Okay, the next, next best thing, as Mike already narrates Deadliest Catch. Instead, this week Mike and the crew get some first hand experience cod fishing in the Bering Sea. And, it may not be as glamorous a job as catching crab, but as Mike puts it best, “Wherever there is danger, there is always dirt.” Oh boy is there dirt.
Onboard the Legacy, Mike tells us the basics of what the ship does, which is a lot more than just catch fish. As the title suggests, it is a ‘floating fish factory’ that not only catches the fish, they also process it, pack it, and offload it in roughly four day cycles for months at a time. It is a crazy amount of work, and the quicker they’re done the sooner they can go back out to make some more money. Most crew members work sixteen hour shifts, and during offloading can work up to forty hours without sleep. And I find it rough staying up to ten on Monday nights watching this show. I’d never survive and I know it.
After they clear out the freezer hold, no small feat, the next order of business is to clean the grinders. It’s so disgusting; it’s a frozen mess of fish ears and guts and even some cod sperm, so of course they let Mike dive right in. Who can blame them? If I did work there (never going to happen) I’d be inviting camera crews onboard all the time in the hopes that they’d want to try out my job. After that is done, they set sail and the real fun begins. Seasickness sets in and we get several nice shots off all the crew of Dirty Jobs doing their best to not just die. Mike is by far the worse, throwing up six… no wait, seven times.
The next day, all is better, and Mike and company get a glimpse of how modern fishing works. It’s after the fish is caught that the real excitement begins. Mike is then shown how to cut the fish and how to squeeze the stomachs (which, take my word, it’s bad) and then package the fish. He’s also given a taste of the poorly named ‘live tank’ where the dead fish are fed to the conveyer belts. I had no idea all of this took place onboard fishing ships. It is a nonstop catch, cut, package cycle that ends up right where Mike started, down in the freezer stacking up cargo to offload when they return.
During the trip the crew had a little excitement as the captain received a distress call (fire) on a nearby fisher. By the time they’d arrived, so had nearly every other ship out at sea and the Coast Guard. Thankfully, everyone was fine, but the ship did need to be abandoned. And, having gotten their appetites back, Mike introduces the chef of the Legacy to us and tries some eyeballs and sperm (I wish that was a joke) as well as some other, less disgusting things. None of it seems edible to me, or Mike, who spits it all out, ending our time onboard the Legacy.
At the very end of the episode we get a quick peak at how, way out in the middle of nowhere, toilets are cleaned. Well, not so much cleaned, as they are emptied. And then the contents are burned in (I kid you not) a ‘turd burner’. It’s so hot that Mike decides to make pancakes on top of the miniature furnace. I still love him, but sometimes I worry about his sanity.