INTERVIEW: Capt. Johnathan Hillstrand readies for big storms on ‘Deadliest Catch’
Captain Johnathan Hillstrand, a longtime veteran of Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch, had four words to describe his recent crabbing season off the shores of Alaska: “some pretty big storms.”
Hillstrand heads the Time Bandit boat with his brother, Andy. The two are grizzled fishermen who have plied the choppy waters of the Bering Sea for years. The ice cold expanse runs through their veins, and they know what it takes to earn a dollar on the mighty sea.
For the new TV season, which premieres Tuesday, March 29 at 9 p.m., Hillstrand has to contend with a host of problems, including the effects of El Niño and run-ins with the law.
“Another rollercoaster ride, that’s for damn sure,” he said recently in a phone interview.
Each and every time Hillstrand shoves off from the shores, he hopes for everyone’s wellbeing. “I just hope that everybody’s safe, and when I leave town, I make sure I got everything,” he said. “I never forget anything, but I feel pretty confident going into it. But you just never know what’s going to happen out there. You never know what to expect, and right away we were getting the big storms and winds.”
Hillstrand said there were a couple storms this past fishing season that he should never have been in. However, that’s the life of a king crab fisher. One cannot choose the time when the catch is running strongly.
“You’ve got to fish, get it and go home,” he said. “We can’t sit in town. It costs too much money. The quicker you catch your quota, the less money you spend, the less fuel, less insurance, less everything.”
Hillstrand is not only one of the stars of Deadliest Catch, but he’s also an avid watcher of the reality series. He loves watching “something worse” happen on another boat, he said with a laugh. “It makes me feel a little bit better about my screwed up life,” he said. “It sucks out there, but we make good money. It seems like there’s always worse happening on other boats, so knocking on wood right now, for sure.”
Discovery Channel pits the captains against one another in a heated battle to make the most money in the crabbing season. Although the competition is fierce, Hillstrand said he hopes everyone does well, a sentiment that fellow Deadliest Catch captain, Sig Hansen, apparently doesn’t believe is genuine.
“Sig is real competitive and stuff,” Hillstrand said. “I hope everyone does good. He doesn’t believe me when I say this. He goes, ‘Bulls***.’ I go, ‘No, I hope you do good, Sig. I hope I do a little bit better than you, but I hope we all do good. And we all come home safe. We all make good money.’ He really has a trying year, too. This year puts us all to the test. All the captains and all the new guys, all the young guys, I can’t wait to see what happens to them. I’ve heard stories of what happens, and now I get to actually watch it.”
The Time Bandit captain called this industry the most real thing out there. The job can go from seeming dullness to deadly action in a matter of seconds. “There’s a lot of times in between where it’s pretty boring, and then you get a guy wrapped in the line all of a sudden, starting to get pulled over the side of the boat or his hand crushed,” he said.
It’s a life and profession that are not suited for everyone. Many so-called greenhorns try to cut their teeth on the open ocean, but they end up quitting after their first season. Hillstrand said there’s no deciphering who will last and who will leave.
To weed out the recruits, Hillstrand ensures that his team members have fished before, perhaps in a salmon fishery. They should know what it’s like to be sleep deprived, no workers who require an eight-hour snooze every night on his boat. It’s also a good idea to have greenhorns who don’t get seasick. “You’re just shooting yourself in the foot if you take a guy out that’s never fished before,” he said.
Even though Hillstrand is a veteran, he’s not immune to the dangers or the difficulties himself. When he leaves shore, ready for another multi-month stint on the sea, his coffee and cigarette intake increases substantially. “You can only do it so long, and then it starts to affect you,” he said of crab fishing. “You got to know where to draw the line, I guess. We lost a really good friend, Phil Harris, out there. None of us are getting any younger. It’s really hard on a guy. It’s a lot of stress.”
He added: “Three months at sea is about the limit. … You see guys, they change. Their face actually looks like it’s longer. … They don’t have much emotion in them. We take a video of them before the trip, and everyone’s, ‘Hey, hey, woohoo.’ At the end of the trip, it’s just, ‘Bah.’”
Being on Deadliest Catch comes with a lot of fame; however, Hillstrand said he’d rather be rich than famous. As one can tell, the salty sea captain is never too far from a joke to ease the tension of his high-tension job.
“We forget that we’re on that show, and then I’ll come into town,” he said. “And they go, ‘You’re that guy.’ And I go, ‘Oh, God, you’re right. I’m that guy.’ And I forgot all about it. We’re just regular guys. We’re just doing our job. We’re not good actors or nothing. They try to get us to do a commercial or something, and it’s funny as hell.”
Hillstrand has been fishing his entire life. His earliest memory is on a boat when he was 3 or 4 years old. His younger brother, Andy, was probably 2. When Hillstrand heard his brother crying, he tried to get to his bunk, but their father intervened.
“My dad threw me back into my bunk and yelled at me,” he remembered. “I told my mom about it, and she said, ‘That was on a tugboat. Your dad got caught in a storm.’ My dad was really scared, and so he yelled at me, ‘Stay in that bunk.’ I was trying to get to my little brother. He was only 2. He was crying.”
It has been choppy waters and close calls ever since.
There are many memories that vividly stay with Hillstrand over the years. For example, he has saved the lives of five people at sea.
One of them was Josh White. “He was on the Trailblazer,” the captain said. “We were just videotaping as we drove by. … Then all of a sudden, Trailblazer goes, ‘Man overboard. Man overboard.’ That’s the worst thing you ever want to hear. You don’t want to ever hear that. After 10 minutes, if they don’t get the guy, you just know he’s dead.”
Hillstrand was able to bring White aboard in approximately four minutes.
“I saw his little head popping out of the water,” he said. “His head was barely showing. We pull him out of the water, and what I didn’t see until I watched the show was he was so hypothermic. You could see his body get white, his arms and his face. He collapsed. He crumbled down the hallway. He couldn’t walk. That’s how close he was to being dead.”
He added: “That’s a pretty huge accomplishment because I’ve pulled dead guys out of the water, too. I pulled a guy out of the water once that was alive and died because of hypothermia. Anyway, don’t ever fall over out there. I’m more afraid of the water, going in the water than anything else. If you’re not in that survival suit, and you don’t get into that life raft, you’re not making it through the night. That’s a fact. It’s not a game out there.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
I have watched “The Deadliest Catch”, from the first episode, and cannot begin to imagine anyone
working in the conditions you endure every year. Nor is there any amount of money that would
entice me to be on one of those fishing boats. However, I know the kind of man that can do this,
as my Father spent 32 years in the Navy, and much of that time was at sea.
Your a special breed of men, and I wish you good luck, great fishing, and safe home coming.