Get extended access to 1600+ episodes, binge watch your favorite shows, and stream anytime - online or in the PBS app.
Already a ThinkTV member?
You may have an unactivated ThinkTV Passport member benefit. Check to see.
Season 11 Episode 3 | 2m 53s | Video has closed captioning.
Phillip Pryzmont hasn't been to a city in over 4 years. He spends his winters in Nome, Alaska cutting holes in the thick ice in the Norton Sound on the Bering Sea. Each of these holes contains a large crab pot that he regularly checks for Alaska Red King Crab to feed his family and sell to others.
Aired: 04/13/22
From:
I've got 17 pots in the water right now.
Definitely feels like it's got some crab in it.
I gotta work on this hole a little more.
Some crab in it though.
You know you work for three or four guys and learn as much as you can then you strike out on your own and find out all the xxxxx you don't know.
You know, you do it long enough and you develop your own system.
That's the same summer and winter you know.
Kind of develop your own way of doing things.
You're not sitting in town and watching the ice freeze, you'll be sitting in town and one day and the ice just comes in.
We had a lot of uh 25 below at my house this winter.
Some years are colder.
There's a couple of different ways to make these holes.
Some guys use chainsaws.
what i use is a 10-inch auger and so i'll go four holes by four holes all the way around and then if you do a good job you know the chunk of ice in the middle floats and you just take the stick and push it under the ice.
So a legal crab is four and three quarters across; here across the carapace.
Bristol Bay red king crabs are the famous ones that weigh 10 pounds or whatever but these are the same.
This guy got damaged.
These guys are the same, we just we're not real sure why they don't get big like that.
I've filled this tote up in like two pots before but that's pretty spectacular.
Oh I definitely eat them, I just I sell most of them.
I do a little bit of subsistence in the off season just to have some to eat you know you invite the friends over for a crab cook that kind of thing.
Yeah Nome's a town of maybe 4,000 people right on the North Coast of the Bering Sea.
Well I like Nome and the bush.
You know, there's not too many people, not too many stores you know it's not real crowded, no traffic.
It's been almost exactly four years since I've been to a city.
I used to handle for dog mushers and so that's what I actually came here to do.
I just came here for the winter I was going to leave in May.
I guess that was a long time ago now.
I haven't quite decided if I'm staying but it seems like it.
