From the network that brought you THE DEADLIEST CATCH...
Lobster Wars, coming soon to the Discovery channel.
Not sure how this will go over with the Deadliest Catch fans crowd. Part of the appeal of Deadliest Catch has to do with the thrill factor of fishing on the Bering Sea, the most dangerous job in the world. Lobster fishing off the Georges Bank--a much calmer body of water overall--just doesn't seem as scary. I guess the additional factor of competition for space on the grounds gives the show some tension, but I'm not sure. Unless they have a lot of embedded crews on a lot of boats, it might get tedious. (Dirty Jobs did a stint aboard a lobster boat, which looked like fairly calm fishing and made for a boring segment.)
Part of what I enjoy about watching Deadliest Catch is the interaction with the crews, which each have their own little storyline to follow, so you never get bored with an individual story, but they all tie together overall. For example, last opilio crab season was all about the greenhorns--that is, crab boat newbies--and how they learned to fit in on each of the boats. The Cornelia Marie had newbie Josh, the captain's eldest son, who was in the awkward position of being supervised by his younger brother Jake. The Wizard had go-getter Crosby who was anxious to learn and eager to step up, 20-something slacker Nick (who got injured in a bar mid-trip), and 40-something Guy, a former rodeo cowboy who thought he could do any tough job but didn't even last 24 hours during the first round of crab pots without giving up and melted down spectacularly near the end of the trip. The Time Bandit had Nate, who had a questionable past and got arrested during a return to port for an outstanding warrant; his captain and crew bailed him out, which gave him new incentive to learn to do the work onboard. The Farwest Leader had 30-something year old John, who'd been captain of his own salmon fishing boat but wanted to move up to the higher pay of the Bering Sea crab fleet; his years of working and guiding his own boat occasionally caused friction with more experienced crabbers who would get frustrated at his rookie mistakes. And the Northwestern had barely-out-of-his-teens Jake, descendent of a multi-generational line of Arctic fishermen, who took everything the Hansen brothers (Sig, the captain; Edgar, the deck boss; Norman, the chief engineer; all of them own and operate the boat) could dish out and more, wanting to prove himself "a man" on board the most successful and most respected boat in the crab fleet. Their stories were separate, and the show would successfully weave them in and out of day-to-day life on the Bering Sea, the perils of crab fishing, the race to catch the quota before the end of the season, and the humanity of the men and women who do this job (one episode last season caught captain Sig Hansen, whose record of never losing a single crew member to death or serious injury despite leading the fleet every year in $$$ earned and poundage caught is the stuff of legends, finally breaking down and crying one night in the wheelhouse as he talked about the pressure of a captain having his entire crew's lives literally in his hands--truly one of the most emotional moments of the entire season). That whole mix is what makes Deadliest Catch work.
How Lobster Wars is going to successfully get all of that kind of storytelling into Atlantic lobster fishing is beyond me. We'll see.
(Of course I'll watch it. Discovery Channel owns my soul.)
Not sure how this will go over with the Deadliest Catch fans crowd. Part of the appeal of Deadliest Catch has to do with the thrill factor of fishing on the Bering Sea, the most dangerous job in the world. Lobster fishing off the Georges Bank--a much calmer body of water overall--just doesn't seem as scary. I guess the additional factor of competition for space on the grounds gives the show some tension, but I'm not sure. Unless they have a lot of embedded crews on a lot of boats, it might get tedious. (Dirty Jobs did a stint aboard a lobster boat, which looked like fairly calm fishing and made for a boring segment.)
Part of what I enjoy about watching Deadliest Catch is the interaction with the crews, which each have their own little storyline to follow, so you never get bored with an individual story, but they all tie together overall. For example, last opilio crab season was all about the greenhorns--that is, crab boat newbies--and how they learned to fit in on each of the boats. The Cornelia Marie had newbie Josh, the captain's eldest son, who was in the awkward position of being supervised by his younger brother Jake. The Wizard had go-getter Crosby who was anxious to learn and eager to step up, 20-something slacker Nick (who got injured in a bar mid-trip), and 40-something Guy, a former rodeo cowboy who thought he could do any tough job but didn't even last 24 hours during the first round of crab pots without giving up and melted down spectacularly near the end of the trip. The Time Bandit had Nate, who had a questionable past and got arrested during a return to port for an outstanding warrant; his captain and crew bailed him out, which gave him new incentive to learn to do the work onboard. The Farwest Leader had 30-something year old John, who'd been captain of his own salmon fishing boat but wanted to move up to the higher pay of the Bering Sea crab fleet; his years of working and guiding his own boat occasionally caused friction with more experienced crabbers who would get frustrated at his rookie mistakes. And the Northwestern had barely-out-of-his-teens Jake, descendent of a multi-generational line of Arctic fishermen, who took everything the Hansen brothers (Sig, the captain; Edgar, the deck boss; Norman, the chief engineer; all of them own and operate the boat) could dish out and more, wanting to prove himself "a man" on board the most successful and most respected boat in the crab fleet. Their stories were separate, and the show would successfully weave them in and out of day-to-day life on the Bering Sea, the perils of crab fishing, the race to catch the quota before the end of the season, and the humanity of the men and women who do this job (one episode last season caught captain Sig Hansen, whose record of never losing a single crew member to death or serious injury despite leading the fleet every year in $$$ earned and poundage caught is the stuff of legends, finally breaking down and crying one night in the wheelhouse as he talked about the pressure of a captain having his entire crew's lives literally in his hands--truly one of the most emotional moments of the entire season). That whole mix is what makes Deadliest Catch work.
How Lobster Wars is going to successfully get all of that kind of storytelling into Atlantic lobster fishing is beyond me. We'll see.
(Of course I'll watch it. Discovery Channel owns my soul.)