The Alaska Ranger Vs. The Deadliest Catch

Either there's some serious Heisenberg Effect happening on Discovery Channel's Alaskan fishing Reality show The Deadliest Catch, or the producers are giving us a severe whitewashing. If you're like us and everything you know about Alaskan fishing comes directly from the show you might think that while there are some hard dudes around they are mostly serious professionals interested in carrying out family traditions safely and effectively under the watchful eyes of benevolent and all-powerful captains.

Contrast that with the testimony currently being given in the investigation of the lost Alaska Ranger. So far there have been allegations of empty beer cans and liquor bottles around fish master Satoshi Konno's quarters, as well as reports that on the Ranger the fish master Konno, in charge of the catch and employed by a Japanese fish buyer, sometimes trumped the captain's decisions. A crew member claiming to have video evidence of this has submitted it to investigators, but lawyers for the Seattle-based fishing company have said that he first tried to extort money from them in order to keep the videos quiet. We've never seen anything like that on The Deadliest Catch, although these commentors on the PI's website seem to corroborate a lot of the professionalism seem on the show.

Unfortunately, we missed the season premier on Tuesday, but it will be interesting to see how the show deals with the Alaska Ranger incident (or if it acknowledges it at all). Testimony revolving around the sinking of the Alaska Ranger and the deaths of several crew members continues today.

Image "re fracted" by Seattle Flickr Pool user EdgarDiazRocks.