The “Deadliest Catch: Bloodline” crew is putting their seafaring know-how to lucrative use.
In a clip shared by @DeadliestCatch on Twitter, the crew dropped some knowledge about underwater sea mountains. Then they proceeded to implement their own advice in real time.
“The seamounts are an underwater mountain range that rise 15,000 feet from the ocean floor,” “Deadliest Catch: Bloodline”’s Jeff Silva explained. “When mid-ocean currents hit their slopes, water wells up from below, carrying nutrients and other food for bait fish up to the surface. It creates its own ecosystem that’s perfect for predators, from below and from above.”
“Lookin’ really good,” Silva then said, pointing at his dashboard display. “We just marked three fish, three big fish on the screen right now.”
Seamounts Are Usually Extinct Volcanoes
The seamounts that the “Deadliest Catch: Bloodline” crew encountered were off Hawaii. Seamounts typically exist around the boundaries of the Earth’s tectonic plates, and near hot spots mid-plate. (Hot spots are areas within tectonic plates where plumes of magma pop up through the plate’s crust and erupt at the seafloor, giving rise to chains of volcanoes and seamounts.)
They are usually extinct volcanoes that, when active, spouted piles of lava that occasionally break the ocean’s surface, according to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.
There are an estimated 100,000 seamounts taller than 1,000 meters worldwide. They offer a foundation for deep-sea creatures to alight on and grow. They also create an ecosystem for other forms of marine life, such as sponges, crabs, sea anemones, commercially valuable fish and deep-sea corals.
In fact, seamounts play host to more than 80 commercially important species across the world. And researchers have been investigating the interaction between seamounts and ocean currents as a potential catalyst for new species formation.
Unfortunately, fish trawling and coral mining also scar the seamount ecosystem. The problem is the type of nets they use, according to Woods Hole.
‘Deadliest Catch: Bloodline’ Takes the Fishing to Hawaii
For those unfamiliar with the Discovery reality TV show, it follows legacy fisherman Josh Harris and his colleagues as they explore the Hawaiian coast using maps left behind by Harris’s late father Phil.
Harris enlists Casey McManus, his business partner and co-captain of his ship, to tag along. (She also put in an appearance on “The Deadliest Catch,” per The Cinemaholic.) Silva, who is one of the top commercial fishermen in Hawaii, also stars in “Deadliest Catch: Bloodline.” And Captain Jonathan Hillstrand, an old friend of Harris’s father’s, also pitches in.
Moreover, instead of the crabs that were hunted in the original series, in the spinoff, the protagonists are after ahi tuna, bonefish, barracuda and swordfish.
Season 2 of “Deadliest Catch: Bloodline” premiered this past spring. It’s available on Discovery or discovery+.