For several seasons on Discovery Channel’s “Deadliest Catch,” executive producer Thom Beers has followed fishermen as they pull living gold in the form of king and snow crab from the waters of Alaska’s Bering Sea, braving fierce storms and frigid temperatures in search of profit.
Starting tonight, Beers’ new Discovery series, “Bering Sea Gold,” follows treasure seekers of a different kind as they hunt for actual gold, deposited over millions of years on the sea floor by glaciers in the waters off Nome.
They individually designed and built floating mining rigs, ranging from a tiny modified skiff to an 80-foot-long dredger that paddles itself out to sea using a backhoe.
“It’s coming out from the glaciers,” Beers says, “just rolling out there. The glaciers have done all the work for you. The runoff has done most of the work for you. Off of Nome, it’s just sitting there in that water.”
The goal is to dig or suck up chunks of sea floor and send them through wash plants and filters in hopes of sorting heavy gold from lighter rocks and sand.
With the price of gold – at this writing – north of $1,500 an ounce, even a little of the precious metal yields a lot of cash.
Unlike the crabbers, the miners work in the summer, the only time of year when the ocean isn’t covered in ice. But that doesn’t mean it’s time for flip-flops and surfboards in a city where summer temperatures average in the 50s. And the miners aren’t spending their off hours lounging in swanky beachside digs.
“You’ve got to love a season,” Beers says. “I know there’s a beginning, a middle and an end. As soon as that bay starts to freeze up, they’re done. You’ve only got basically 10 weeks, if you’re lucky, to get out there and find that gold.
“So these guys, they’re doing whatever they can, all night long, all day long. Remember, it’s 24 hours of the sun; they can work 25 hours straight. If they’re on the gold, they’re on it, and it’s frickin’ cold and miserable. These guys are living on beaches and in sheds and shacks.
“The weather is a huge problem up there. Even though it’s summer, storms come into that area. You’re lucky to get calm seas maybe a day a week, so it’s not like you’re doing 24 hours a day every day. They get rained out constantly; they get winded out; they get stormed out.
“It’s brutal, but it’s all for the gold, baby, going for the gold.”