He wasn’t a greenhorn. Not really.
Marysville native Dan Borovina, 29, is a fourth-generation commercial fisherman who’s worked in the industry since age 14.
But he hadn’t been on a crab boat before and the crew wanted to see the new deckhand perform some sort of initiation.
With the “Deadliest Catch” camera rolling, one guy gutted a cod, squeezed its blood into a paper cup and handed it to Borovina.
With a big swig and a swish through his teeth, Borovina swallowed the cod blood.
“I’m gonna hurl,” said the boat’s Capt. “Wild Bill” Wichrowski.
Borovina smiled. Fishing is in his blood.
The current season of Discovery’s popular reality TV show about Alaska crabbers includes some of Borovina’s adventure this past fall aboard the crab boat Cape Caution out of Dutch Harbor, Alaska.
“I don’t have a lot of air time on the show and I didn’t do it for the 15 minutes of fame. My family was thrilled, of course, but reality TV is not reality. I had to push the cameraman a few times and the microphone chaffed my neck,” Borovina said. “I was there for my friend Nick McGlashan, the deck boss, and for the experience of working on a Bering Sea crab boat. It was the opportunity of a lifetime.”
As you read this, Borovina is headed north to Bristol Bay for two months of salmon fishing.
He had been working at the Snohomish lumber mill that recently announced its impending closure and was ready to get back on the ocean.
“I am at peace on the water,” he said. “I grew up in Marysville, but I spent a lot of time in the net sheds near our family boats on the Everett waterfront, and their old buoys were the seats on our swing set at home.”
Borovina is from a family of fishermen of Yugoslavian heritage. His father, David Borovina, as well as his uncle, grandfather and great-great uncle were well known among Everett’s fishing fleet.
When he was growing up, Borovina’s dad would be gone all summer off the coast of Alaska or on Puget Sound. His mom, Julie Madsen Borovina (now Hanner), ran an in-home day-care center and raised Dan, his brother and his two sisters.
When he was 7, Dan’s father got sick and died.
“My mom was amazing. She was a soccer mom and always there for us,” Borovina said. “But my brother and I really missed that father figure in our lives.”
In the summer of 2001, Dan joined the crew of his Uncle Michael Borovina’s boat, the purse seiner Sea Pride.
“I wanted to fill that void created by not having my dad around. I wanted to learn more about my dad by going fishing,” he said. “We headed out. When we got to Snow Pass off of Southeast Alaska, my uncle told me that my dad would want me to know that I was about to see a fish jump, a bald eagle and a whale. When I did, I knew I was where I was supposed to be.”
It was a moment of clarity, he said.
“I was hooked and I haven’t been home in summer since then,” Borovina said.
After graduating from Marysville Pilchuck High School in 2004, Borovina fished throughout most of each year, working calamari in Southern California, sardines in Oregon, herring off Kodiak and salmon in the southeast of Alaska and around the Salish Sea.
“I wanted to live the legacy, carry on the tradition and the heritage, but I really wasn’t dealing with my dad’s death,” he said.
Borovina fell into drug abuse. “My lifestyle was work hard, come home and party hard. And that cycle continued for years.”
His beloved brother, also haunted by the loss of their father, took his own life a few years ago. That was Borovina’s lowest point.
“My addiction was ruining my life and my family cut me off. I was unable to fish. I was on the street and in and out of jail.”
Then a cousin intervened.
Craig and Stacey Councilman of Everett took Dan in.
“They fed me, gave me a home, love and the resources to get me into recovery,” Borovina said. “That was at the end of 2013. They knew my potential.”
Working on his cousin’s boat, the Christian S, Borovina went back up to Southeast Alaska and Bristol Bay.
“I got my bills paid off, rekindled my relationships with my family, got my driver’s license back and became employable again,” he said. “When I gave my life to Jesus, I was able to look at the past and forgive myself and move forward in a positive direction.”
This past Easter, he was baptized and has found a home with New Life Foursquare Church in Everett.
While in Bristol Bay, Borovina’s friend McGlashan invited him to work the fall king crab season.
“Nick and I both struggle with addiction, but we both work hard as fishermen. I got to Dutch Harbor ready to work and ready to encourage Nick.”
On board, too, were the cameraman and a producer from “Deadliest Catch.”
Usually, boats the size of Cape Caution have six crew members, so there was room for the “Deadliest Catch” guys and plenty of extra work for the four crewmen.
“It was the most physically demanding job I’ve ever done,” Borovina said. “One time we worked 42 hours without sleep. There were 60 mph winds and 30-foot swells. It kicked my ass, but I did all the tasks asked of me. The only time I got called to talk to the captain was when he saw that I wasn’t eating enough.”
At 6-feet tall and 165 pounds, Borovina is in shape to head back to Alaska. However, after this fishing trip he plans to find a job that will allow him to settle down, but stay on the waterfront, possibly working as a longshoreman.
“This will be the first time since I was a kid that I’ve been able to spend August with my family,” he said. “I would like to meet a girl who shares my faith and have a family. ‘Deadliest Catch’ was great, but my successes with recovery are the real story.”
See it
The Discovery Channel’s reality TV show “Deadliest Catch” is about lives of the crew members on crab boats in the Bering Sea. For more information, go to www.discovery.com/tv-shows/deadliest-catch.
Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427; gfiege@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @galefiege.
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