Reasons Why The Deadliest Catch Is Fake
The Deadliest Catch is yet another reality show that focuses on the blue-collar world of an unassuming job, one that we all know, but none us know, you know? This time, it's the high stakes life of a fishermen. It makes sense that The Deadliest Catch is fake — it's about fishing, fishing is boring, ergo a non-boring fishing show cannot possibly exist — but there's a lot more to it than that. Read on ...
Producers faked a storm by editing two weather events together
How in the hell do you fake a storm, of all things? Even the X-Men can't do that! Well, it's really simple: you pay the government to borrow their weather-controlling device and then viola! insta-storm.
Okay, no. See, what actually happened is, there was flooding in the show at one point, but flooding isn't that exciting. You know what is exciting? A storm that is so bad, it's threatening to capsize the boat! Oh no, they're all going to die! How was it done? Simple — the ship really was flooding, but with no awful storm backing it up. So the production crew waited until there was a horrendous storm, filmed that, and then edited the footage of the storm together with the flooding. Since there's a voice over narrating all that's happening in the show, it's a simple task to trick the audience into thinking everything's happening at the same time. (Hint: the trick is, you just outright lie and say it's happening at the same time.) It's the same thing as photoshopping yourself into a picture with Elvis, only slightly less believable.
There are around one hundred boats out there, most of which are not shown
How many boats can you name on The Deadliest Catch? Maybe three or four. So that's about how many are out there fishing, right? Not exactly. Try about a hundred. Originally, there were even more — over a hundred, and possibly up to 300, but then the system the fishermen was working on was changed over, so it made more sense for people to gang up. (The new system is called a quota system, and there'll be more on it in a bit.)
While it's not exactly disingenuous to limit yourself to only four or five ships out of the hundred of ships out there, it's not exactly showing the whole picture either. All we're getting is the sanitized, approved-for-television version of fishing out there. Pretending that you can catch all those fishies and crabs with just a few boats isn't even close to a pure and unfiltered look at what many feel is one of the deadliest jobs in the world.
They're out there much longer than it seems
Based on watching the show, you'd think an episode covers pretty much all that happens to the crew of the ships. You'd be so, so wrong. The crew of each boat is actually working, pretty much non-stop for hours and hours on end. One captain described the working conditions as being done in thirty-hour stretches. During those hours of work, there's always a camera running. With each episode covering about a week, that's around two hundred of hours of film — per boat — per episode.
This means that, in reality, instead of an awesome, action-packed, 45-minute drama, the life of the fishermen on the fleets of The Deadliest Catch are actually brief moments of excitement, filled with hours of boring drudgery that no one could ever bear to sit through. So, basically the same as your life! Though it is true that the fishermen of the show do work a lot more than you (most likely) do.
Of course, there's a cost to being out there for hours and hours and hours on end...
Their fishing quotas are lowered so the stars look more successful
The Deadliest Catch is so fake, it's threatening to put other fishermen out of business. How? By driving the prices down to such a degree, the competitors can't afford it.
See, fishing is a lot more complex than "go out in a boat and get some fish." For instance — and we're going to try and explain this as simply as possible, but you can check it out more over here — fishing is heavily regulated. Because of this, fishermen get quotas — a certain amount of fish that they're required to catch. Now, some people can afford to get quotas but can't afford to meet them, so these people lease out their quotas to other fishermen and fleets. The pair make an agreement on how much of the profits they'll split, with the fleet getting a somewhat large percentage of it, since they're the ones paying to go out and fish.
Now the problem is, the fishermen and crew working on The Deadliest Catch don't actually need to make money from fishing — because they're on television, and making a show is their business, they aren't as worried about making money off of the fish they catch. Which means that, when they get leases, they can afford to take only twenty percent of the profits, leaving eighty percent over to the people who leased them the quotas. But, that's grossly affecting all the other fleets — you know, the ones who actually need to make their money from fishing.
So, in case it's not clear, the fleet of The Deadliest Catch is undercutting prices to such an absurd degree because the fish don't matter to them, and that means other fishermen are going to lose their living, at which point a reality show will be made called Homeless, about all the people whose lives were ruined by a reality show. The winner gets a refrigerator.
Elliot Neese claims the drama is made up
What about the people, you ask? What we watch Deadliest Catch for is the drama of their lives, the reactions of the men and women doing one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. No way that isn't real and valid. Right? ... Right?
Well, according to Elliot Neese, one of the captains of the show, the show's drama is definitely not real, but pure entertainment. Everything's 100% controlled, and he's not nearly as much of a villain as the show makes him out to be. To be fair, he is the villain, so he could be making it all up, in his continued plot to be just the worst. Or maybe, the fact that the show portrays him so horrible has led him to feel fine about opening up about the deceptive editing practices of the show.
He also called Jake Andersen, the captain who came on to replace him, "a TV captain," implying that he was simply brought on as captain for the show, and hadn't actually earned it. Okay, at this point, after looking everything over, we have to ask: why not just film a scripted show? Seems it'd be cheaper.