Working on the Edge: Surviving in the World's Most Dangerous Profession : King Crab Fishing on Alaska's High Seas

Working on the Edge: Surviving in the World's Most Dangerous Profession : King Crab Fishing on Alaska's High Seas by Walker, Spike. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780312060022.

No profession pits man against nature more brutally than king crab fishing in the frigid, unpredictable waters of the Bering Sea. The yearly death toll is staggering (forty-two men in 1988 alone); the conditions are beyond most imaginations (90-mph Arctic winds, 25-foot seas, and super-human stretches of on-deck labor); but the payback, if one survives can be tens of thousands of dollars for a month-long season. In a breathtaking, action-packed account that combines his personal story with the stories of survivors of the industrys most harrowing disasters, Spike Walker re-creates the boom years of Alaskan crab fishing--a modern-day gold rush that drew hundreds of fortune-and adventure-hunters to Alaskas dangerous waters--and the crash that followed.