A slashed crab quota has captains reeling before the boats hit the water. With the fleet set to fight over half the catch, each skipper is forced to decide between rolling the dice on the depleted Red grounds or risking it all to hunt for the elusive Blue crab.
With the fleet split, a tale of two fisheries emerges. On the Blue grounds, a captains? bet has the boats jockeying for position while a returning veteran quickly proves his worth on the Red grounds.
As the fleet grinds through injuries and mental mistakes, the Bering Sea exposes soft spots and weak links in each crew.
Halfway through the King crab gauntlet, the beaten-down crews must dig deep to get over the midseason hump. As the crab counts dwindle, the skippers challenge their young deckhands to either step up or step off.
Past the halfway point of the King Crab season, man and machine alike show signs of wear under the brutal hand of the Bering Sea. While repairs can be made to the equipment, the fishermen must dig deep to soldier on.
As king crab season nears the finish line, the crew of The Wizard faces a life-or-death situation as a deckhand collapses and struggles to hold on. Catching crab suddenly becomes secondary to a fight for survival on the harsh Bering Sea.
In a scramble to help their collapsed greenhorn, the Wizard crew calls in a Coast Guard helicopter. For the rest of the fleet, it's a race to haul crab before a hurricane hits and the last boat fishing waits too long to leave the grounds.
In the aftermath of an arctic hurricane, the fleet struggles to reach the finish line of a brutal king crab season. Poor fishing and quarreling crews make this final push a painful one for every man on the Bering Sea.
It's winter in Dutch Harbor and the fleet is preparing to hunt Opilio crab. The season looks promising with the quota up and the prices high but tensions begin to rise before the lines are even thrown. One deckhand quits, two brothers fight and one goes overboard.
With unrelenting northerly winds bearing down on the fleet, every skipper steels himself for battle with the descending polar ice pack. And as temperatures drop on the grounds, tempers on deck flare up.
Across the fleet, captains battle the descending Polar ice pack to save their pots and it’s a losing war. The Northwestern and Wizard struggle to escape St. Paul harbor while the rest of the fleet scrambles to keep their Opilio season alive.
The polar ice pack invades the Opilio crab grounds, forcing the captains to make a decision: grab their gear and run or keep fishing and fight the floes. Two deckhands fall victim to an ice assault and a captain’s troubles are compounded by a call home.
The ice pack has a choke hold on the Bering Sea Opilio grounds. Nearly iced up, captains across the fleet must make the call to stay or go. Some run from the ice and others stay to battle the elements for the hope of a record-breaking payday.
Attempting to return after one of the worst ice events in history, one boat suffers total blackout, Elliott gets a rude awakening and a greenhorn learns a deadly lesson.
Two brothers find themselves in the same dire situation that sunk their father’s boat. After a midseason hiatus, the fleet returns to the Bearing Sea but the ice is back and worse than before. Now the skippers could get pushed past their breaking points.
In the final stretch of a merciless Opilio season the fleet gives it everything they’ve got and the Bering Sea just takes more. As the season ends, the veterans of the fleet see hope in a new group of young leaders but not everyone will make it back home.