The milestone 20th season of Deadliest Catch got off to a fiery start for Captain Keith Colburn and crew who faced a blaze aboard the F/V Wizard. It could have had catastrophic and tragic results, almost losing a crew member in Tyler Gatean. This was a sobering reminder of how dangerous and stressful the job of a commercial crab fisherman can be.
Colburn and the rest of the captains have felt added pressure with the Red King Crab fishery open, competition hot, and big quotas to make before the season closes. They also had to endure the unpredictability of the weather patterns and wild Super El Niño storms hitting the Bering Sea, which created some wild weather conditions.
If the shocking clip shared first exclusively to TV Insider from the September 24 episode is any indication, things seem to get even more dicey for Colburn. As the season finale inches closer, it’s clear that stress is starting to take its toll on the captain. He is angry with his brother Monte whose decision was to go west of St. Paul. The result was empty crab pots and costing them $30,000 in fuel. An argument turns into a shouting match between the two.
Emotions are running high and tempers are flaring, when without warning, Colburn collapses in the wheelhouse and is unresponsive to his brother’s calls. Other captains hear of the medical emergency over the radio It’s a scary moment that will be continued in the October 1 episode with an intense rescue to get the veteran captain the urgent medical care that he needs.
Colburn has developed a reputation for having a short fuse at times and being hot-headed. This was apparent in Season 7 when a conflict with a cameraman almost came to blows. The 61-year-old nearly missed an entire crabbing season in 2018 while battling osteomyelitis, a serious bacterial infection in his spine. Then a few years later an umbilical hernia forced him to leave the vessel and cut his season short. We’ll have to find out how things play out this time around.
Also, teased for the upcoming episode is Captain Sig Hansen gets taken off course when an Arctic storm strikes the Northwestern on its opening set of Golden King. Elsewhere, Captian Jake Anderson faces the devastating loss of his longtime engineer.
