Thom Beers, the creator of Deadliest Catch, Monster Garage, and Ice Road Truckers, talks about his new show, Bering Sea Gold.

by Blaine McEvoy

So you’re home in Los Angeles now?
Yeah, but I just got back from my house in the Mexican Sierra Nevada. It’s spectacular. I have a hot air balloon that was built on Monster Garage. It’s impossible to fly in L.A., so I keep it in Mexico. I’ve just been flying my balloon and riding ATVs through the mountains. It’s awesome!

You’ve made a career out of profiling renegades, fisherman, and truckers. Why is now the time to introduce the world to Alaskan gold dredging?
There are three things that excite me: high risks, high rewards, and really exotic locations. Put those three together and no matter what, you’re going to make a great television series. I’m always searching for that trifecta, and I found it again in an amazing place called Nome, Alaska.

Who brought that city to your attention?
I’ve actually spent a lot of time there. A couple of years ago, I made a series about the Iditarod, which ends in Nome, for the Discovery Channel. Since then it’s been one of my favorite haunts in the world. That place is the last great American frontier.

The first episode makes it clear that Nome is a frontier community, but would you also characterize it as down and out?
It’s really just the housing. There are nice homes in Nome — it’s not like everything’s a pit. What you see on the show are the fringes of town. Some of these prospectors are only up there for six, ten, or twelve weeks in the summer, so they’re not going to spend a lot of money on a nice house. They’re just going to get a trailer, yurt, or tent, because bringing wood up to Alaska is not an easy chore. As a matter of fact, people used to ship bricks up there for 25 cents each, because it was the only way you could build a house.

What time of year were you filming?
June, July, and August. The summer months — that’s the only time. There’s still ice in the water in May.

Throughout those months, you’re looking at, what, 20 hours of sunlight every day?
Try 24! It’s an amazing thing. It’s so weird when you’re up there, too. It’s disorienting when you hear little kids, four and five year olds, playing outside at four in the morning! During winter, it’s 20 or 24 hours of darkness. The sun never comes out. Your body is trained differently, and you raise your children differently. You say, “hey, grab as much sunlight as you can, kid, because the other six months suck.”

How much time did you spend with the cast and crew this season?
I’ve got 14 series on the air, so it’s not like I could just get up and go to Nome. But next summer? I’m there, man. I’ll be there at least a couple of weeks. I just fucking love this. To me, this show has everything for men. It’s a fucking rough and tumble town where you need to fight and scrape to survive. It’s filled with testosterone and adrenaline.

What is your day-to-day role as the show’s executive producer?
Once the show is cast — and once the storylines are laid down — my job is to sit. I spend most of my time in post-production, looking at footage, because these are complicated stories. Look at Deadliest Catch — I shoot 400 hours for every hour that’s on the air. That means 399 hours have to disappear. So you track the stories and make sure they are clean and well-told, with dramatic arcs that work.

You feature a character with hospital debt and another who’s trying to save money for an education. It’s the pursuit of the American Dream: people who are somewhat at the bottom striving to get ahead.
And isn’t that almost a mirror of what’s going on in America? Everybody’s looking for an opportunity to reinvent. I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid, the idea of going hunting for gold — in a heartbeat I’d have done that.

What are some of the dangers of dredging for gold in the Bering Sea?
Well, first and foremost, you’re underwater. And that water is about 34 degrees Fahrenheit. If you’re in there without a wetsuit, you’ll freeze to death. But a wetsuit alone won’t keep you alive — you have to pump hot water into the suit. Also, when you’re breathing below the surface, there’s a tendency for the moisture in your lungs to start blocking your airway, which can actually freeze. And the motor that’s heating your suit could always kick out – and you wouldn’t even know it. All of a sudden you would be down there, getting drowsy, and getting numb. You would freeze to death and not even know it. People die doing this. That’s what’s dangerous about it. You also can also get your arm sucked right into the dredging hose. It can rip that damn thing right off. I mean, it’s pretty gnarly. Besides that, you’ve got the weather to deal with. Sometimes these guys need to break the ice just to get out of the bay. And let’s not forget about storms, which can blow in and capsize you. If you get whacked overboard by a wave, you’re toast.

Is dredging a difficult trade to learn?
There’s a real science to combing the sea floor, seeing if someone’s already been there. You can hit massive dry spots with nothing, so you need to be able to read the currents. This season, one boat spends almost the entire summer coming up empty handed. But there’s great redemption. You’re looking for that in the last couple episodes, and things get really interesting.

The boats featured on the show vary greatly in size: some are barely skiffs, while others are large barges. Is there any strategy behind size?
Some of these crews can pull in two or three hundred thousands dollars of gold in a single week. Guys with large barges put up a million bucks a season. It’s really just a matter of how much silt and dirt they can push through their dredges. But I think if every one of those guys had the opportunity, they’d love to have large barges. But you’ve got to start somewhere: those little ones cost $10,000 to $15,000. And to a lot of guys, that’s their life savings.

Other than its value, what do you think is so special about gold?
There’s something very weird about it. All you need to do is put your hands around it and I swear to you, with God as my witness, I’m not kidding you, it’s alchemy. Something happens. A chemical change comes over your body.

It’s a Lord of the Rings moment.
It’s weird – it is. It really is “my precious.” It’s better than sex.

After the premiere, do you anticipate an increase in prospectors traveling north in search of fortunes?
Oh, I do. This is exactly what happened with Deadliest Catch. After the first couple of seasons aired, people went to Dutch Harbor wanting to work on crab ships in the worst way. But at the same time, they realize how unbelievably fucking hard it is. In Nome, we only focused on five boats, but there were close to 150. So there are a lot of other people already doing this. But I’ll tell you what: Nome’s not that easy a place to get to.

Do you think this show will resonate with your fans?
Guys are funny. Guys look for scores. They want to know who won and who lost. It doesn’t matter what — everything’s a fucking sport. I’m not kidding you. At the end of each show, you want to know how much gold each one of these guys found. That’s the score. So who won?

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