There are rough days at work.
And then there’s working on a crab boat in the Bering Sea.
Terrifying footage captured by commercial fisherman Luke Clay, better known online as Mr. Fishen, shows a fishing vessel getting absolutely worked by enormous open-ocean swells in one of the most notoriously dangerous bodies of water on Earth.
Check it out below.
Filmed from inside the wheelhouse, the clip shows the bow climbing a dark wall of water before dropping deeply into the trough. Another wave rises ahead, seemingly level with the boat’s upper structure, before exploding across the bow in a torrent of whitewater.
Judging from the boat for scale, the largest waves appear to have faces somewhere around 25 to 30 feet, although accurately measuring wave height from a single video is impossible.
And the Bering Sea can get even bigger.
Related: Watch: Sperm Whale Sinks 52-Foot Yacht in Terrifying South Pacific Attack
A National Weather Service marine forecast issued Wednesday calls for 26-to-34-foot seas Thursday in portions of the Bering Sea, with southwest winds reaching 35 to 50 knots. Another offshore zone was placed under a hurricane-force wind warning, with gusts associated with winds reaching 55 to 70 knots.
Clay knows the environment well. His online biography says he has spent years commercial fishing in Alaska for snow crab, king crab, cod, black cod and halibut. His social feeds document everything from enormous seas and snowstorms to orcas cruising alongside fishing vessels.
Check out this crazy scene, linked here, and below:
The U.S. Coast Guard has called the Bering Sea an “unforgiving and dangerous body of water, perhaps the worst in the world.”
History backs that up.
In 2017, the crab boat Destination capsized near St. George Island during heavy freezing spray. All six crew members were lost. Two years later, the Scandies Rose capsized while heading toward Bering Sea fishing grounds; five of seven crew members died. Investigators cited poor stability combined with heavy ice accumulation and conditions more extreme than forecast.
And in 2018, one exceptionally large Bering Sea wave smashed into the wheelhouse of the fishing vessel Progress, causing $1.3 million in damage.
Clay’s footage is another reminder why crab fishing earned its reputation.
Out there, a 30-foot wave isn’t something you watch from shore.
It’s coming straight over the bow.
Related: Watch: 20-Foot Rogue Wave Capsizes Yacht in the Middle of Pacific Ocean
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