PENDLETON, Ore. — One of the fresh faces on Discovery Channel’s “Deadliest Catch” is billed as a take-no-prisoners captain possessing youth, steely confidence and a fast-paced fishing style. One of Captain Scott Campbell Jr.’s mottos is “Leave no crab behind.”
Campbell, a Walla Walla resident who spent much of his boyhood in the landlocked city of Milton-Freewater, captains the Seabrooke, a speedy vessel branded by Discovery Channel as “the Corvette of the Bering Sea.”
Viewers will get to form their own opinions when the newest season starts Tuesday.
Campbell, home in Walla Walla after filming the first eight episodes, talked about life on the Seabrooke. His father, Scott Campbell Sr. (aka Senior) sat close by. The men, who jointly own the Seabrooke, are obviously close. After years spent at sea together, they seem able to read each other’s minds.
The family lived in Kodiak, Alaska, until Campbell was about 8 and then moved to a small farm in Milton-Freewater.
“While most kids played with cars and trucks, he played with salmon and crab,” said his father.
As a 4-year-old, the boy pushed fish on a tender. By the time he was 12, he spent summers fishing on his dad’s boat.
Senior, retired after 34 years as a fishing boat captain, says he did his best to funnel his son toward a less-dangerous career on land, one that wouldn’t take him away from family for months at a stretch.
But, when Junior insisted on fishing, Senior devised a plan to convince him otherwise. He invited his teenage son to spend two-and-a-half months at sea on his boat, before spending another three months on a longliner owned by his best friend.
“I figured five-and-a-half months would change his mind,” Senior said, “but he was more stubborn than me.”
Now Campbell, 36, is competing against four other “Deadliest Catch” captains, each hoping to outcrab the other. The Seabrooke crew manipulates 700-pound, 7-by-7-foot crab pots, about 125 of them each trip. The crew separates their catch using hydraulic sorting tables. Big crabs go in a holding tank, while juveniles go quickly back into the water through a chute.
Campbell’s fishing style is intense. Rather than placing his crab pots in systematic patterns in “the flat,” he searches for concentrated pockets of crab on the fringe.
“I like to fish the edges and the currents,” he said. “When you find them, you go like hell.”
The captains maintain a friendly, yet focused, rivalry. Campbell is always cognizant of the other boats in the fleet, vowing to work harder and faster.
“We’re all fighting to be the top boat — that’s never going to change,” he said. “If you can’t stay one step ahead of the fleet, then you’re going to get swallowed up in the pack.”
Two videographers and four stationary cameras capture every moment of action aboard the Seabrooke. Each morning, Campbell discusses the day’s fishing plan with a producer. Often, he is asked to stop fishing and make a “cut away” — a comment about something that just happened.
Dramatic moments caught on film are all real, he said.
“You can’t fabricate 20-foot waves coming over the side of the boat,” Campbell said. “It doesn’t matter what camera angle you use.”
Campbell realizes his profession is one of the most dangerous in the world.
“It’s not so much the job itself — it’s the environment that goes along with the job,” Campbell said. “All of a sudden, you’re on an unstable platform that is rocking and rolling. You have to burn a lot of energy just to keep your balance.”
Campbell is taking a break from all that now, enjoying time with his wife, Lisa, and his two daughters, Stormee, 16, and Trinidy, 11. Though he is happily soaking up every moment before returning to sea, it is difficult to leave the Seabrooke completely behind.
On the boat, he is accustomed to sleeping in three-hour stretches with a backdrop of wave noise and constant movement. On land, the nights spent on land seem too quiet and still.
Campbell will return to the Bering Sea soon enough where he and his crew will face the elements once again. He is confident he will outcrab the other “Deadliest Catch” captains.
“I’m not cocky — there’s a difference between confidence and cockiness,” he said. “There are a lot of better fishermen out there. We just work harder than they do. We catch crab quicker than anyone else.”
Information from: East Oregonian, http://www.eastoregonian.info
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