Why Johnathan Hillstrand returned to Deadliest Catch

Speaking from Seattle, Washington where he’s in Covid-19 isolation with his family, the reasons for his return are murky, mostly because the phone connection is so bad that the veteran crab fisherman sounds like he might actually be under the sea.

But as a fisherman, Hillstrand is used to dealing with faulty lines and after some back and forth across 11,000km he reveals why he’s coming back to Deadliest Catch.

“I don’t know,” he laughs. “It (being at sea) felt like the longest 30 days. This 30 days at home doing isolation is a cakewalk,” by comparison.

Throughout 15 seasons, Deadliest Catch has told the story of the highs, lows and rivalries of the various crews fishing the waters of the Bering Sea. But this 16th season is a little bit different in that it also explores how illegal fishing by Russian crews affects the Deadliest Catch cast members.

Hillstrand says that illegal fishing is a problem that has been ongoing for several years.

“They’re actually annihilating those crab stocks because they’re not managing it properly, making it sustainable like we do. We try to keep it sustainable to where we can fish every year. We don’t keep female crab or little crab and they were doing all that.”

Part of Hillstrand’s reason for heading out to the Bering Sea once more is to retain a fishing quota known as captain’s shares. He figured as he would already be out at sea, why not do the show, too.

“Captain’s shares, they’ll take ‘em from you if you don’t use them every couple of years, so I had to come back out.”

That necessity is good news for fans who have missed the former captain of the Time Bandit. While Hillstrand is back, his boat isn’t.

Over the course of the series, the Time Bandit almost became a character in itself – it even has its own Wikipedia page – but Hillstrand says the costs and the red tape associated with running the boat became too prohibitive.

So in this season of Deadliest Catch, he is out fishing with Jake Anderson on his boat, Saga.

When Hillstrand got the call to return to the show, the producers suggested he join up with ‘Wild’ Bill Wichrowski, captain of Summer Bay, but he baulked at that idea.

“No, you couldn’t give me enough money to go out with Wild Bill so I went out with Jake Anderson.”

Hillstrand says he and Anderson are friends, but it wasn’t easy watching someone else in charge.

“It was sort of hard not to micromanage,” he says.

“We go through a lot. It’s crazy what happens out there.”

But their partnership has proved successful in terms of content for the show.

In this season, Hillstrand is also caught in a storm which he describes as, “The strongest storm I’ve been in in 20 years,” and reveals a boat “might run aground”.

“Never done that before in a boat,” he sighs. “Jake Anderson, I love him dearly but oh my God, I was tested.”

Hillstrand is a larger-than-life character but he turns sombre as he talks about the Scandies Rose, a vessel that sank on New Year’s Eve, resulting in the deaths of five crew members, including Captain Gary Cobban Jr and his son.

“We lost the Scandies Rose. It’s a boat that’s been out there for 40 years. I knew Gary since he ran the Rebel. His son Dave was with him.

“I don’t know if I’m going to go back out after all that happened.”

Whether he returns for another season is yet to be determined but this season did provide him with the opportunity to pull off what he considers one of his proudest achievements.

“Be ready to watch the biggest explosions ever on Deadliest Catch,” he laughs. “That’s my claim to fame.”