The crews and battered boats are feeling the brunt of one of the hardest Opilio seasons on record. While some crew members battle potentially catastrophic breakdowns to stay on the grounds and keep fishing, others throw in the towel and call it quits.

The Cornelia Marie uses US satellites to spy on the Russians, Scott pioneers a dormant fishery and Wild Bill faces off with a Russian greenhorn.

As wintry weather pounds the fleet, a 30-foot wave crushes a Titan Explorer deckhand, threatening Jake's captaincy. On the Time Bandit, Johnathan loses a generator and goes dark. The Aleutian Lady drives into the weather to reach Dutch Harbor for repairs.

When Sig and Mandy disagree on a fishing strategy, Clark is caught in the middle. Wild Bill comes down hard on deckhands as Linda gets too close to danger. Keith pulls the Wizard alongside the Saga and unleashes unexpected bad blood.

Josh and Casey haul in their biggest pots ever, starting a gold rush to the Russian line. Captain Bill gets some inside intel, while Harvey confirms the numbers his own way. As Arctic Storm Elsa strengthens, the fleet realizes the ice queen casts a deadly spell.

Captains scramble to meet an expanded quota in the path of a violent system dubbed "Squall-pocalypse". A breakdown on the Wizard puts Monte in debt to the Time Bandit and Josh and Casey exceed their own quota when it comes to injuries on deck.

When Sig's fishing information falls into the wrong hands, he deals his protégé a lesson he won't soon forget. After his crew gets slammed by back-to-back waves, Rick faces a gun-shy deckhand. Sophia contends with a crewman with a badly infected tooth.

Saga loses a veteran deckhand, forcing Jake to steam a greenhorn army to the Russian line. Amid scuttlebutt that ports are closing due to a virus, Josh fights to get home for a reunion with his brother and Sig's daughter gets rushed to the hospital.

A new deckhand falls ill on the Time Bandit, raising questions for Andy and warning signs for John. A bait pallet breaks loose, forcing Captain Rick to deal with a severe crew injury. When Wild Bill's plan A fails on the Summer Bay, Maria tries plan P.

An early closure forces captains to work together to get their catch safely to port; Sig crosses a line when he repositions a rookie captain's pots; Jake and Sean race back from Adak while Linda bolsters her east coast reputation in the Bering Sea.

In the winter season premiere, Sig and Keith risk fishing far from land despite a forecast Super El Niño season and encounter a gauntlet of Bering Sea weather. After sand fleas consume his bait, Johnathan strategically sets pots near a submarine volcano.

Aboard the Wizard, Keith must retrieve his lost anchor in 50-knot winds. Sig attempts a risky new strategy before finding himself racing to secure the next offload slot. Rick starts to turn his season around, only to lose a greenhorn to a gruesome injury.

John risks capsizing after being forced to fish with a slack tank. Jake hauls in the largest seas of his career. Under pressure to get home for the arrival of Mandy's second child, Sig and Clark fish deeper than ever before as mechanical problems mount.

With unrelenting northerly winds bearing down on the fleet, every skipper steels himself for battle with the descending polar ice pack. And as temperatures drop on the grounds, tempers on deck flare up.

Two brothers find themselves in the same dire situation that sunk their father's boat. After a midseason hiatus, the fleet returns to the Bearing Sea, but the ice is back and worse than before. Now the skippers could get pushed past their breaking points.

Josh and Casey race to haul pots as engine failure threatens their delivery window. As seawater destroys his hydraulic motors, Junior attempts a risky high seas delivery of three new motors. Harley and his crew bang heads over his fishing strategy.

Sig and Mandy conspire to get Jake to do their prospecting, but the former deckhand seizes the moment to fill his own tanks. The Wizard crew must break through ice to rush Keith to a doctor. Junior fears the worst as a deckhand falls from the stack.

As a typhoon rocks the Bering Sea, the Summer Bay suffers a collision. Sig gambles all his pots in one spot, while Casey takes a scientific approach to finding the elusive Bairdi crab. John and Josh rush a pit stop to get the Time Bandit back in the hunt.

Sig gets tough news at sea forcing the Hansens to make a critical decision as John and Andy lend a hand. With wheelhouse ambitions, Jacob hits a wall with Keith on the Wizard. New captain Jack crosses a line when Harley makes a deal with Jake.

Sig buries his beloved mother and the last of his family's pioneering generation. Sean Dwyer joins forces with Rick Shelford but the two captains don't see eye to eye on rules. Jacob fights back on the Wizard and finds no safe harbor from Captain Keith.

Sig devises a clever way to simultaneously silence his crew and fish faster with the clock ticking on the fall season.

Sig gets blown off course when an Arctic storm strikes the Northwestern on its opening set of Golden King; Jake faces the loss of his longtime engineer; Monte takes the wheel of the Wizard when Keith inexplicably collapses in the wheelhouse.

As Keith fights for his life at Anchorage General, Sig helps his brother Monte to get back on the crab. Aboard the Titan Explorer, Jake's deckhand is knocked out by 900 pounds of swinging steel. Rick's new engineer crosses a line he can't come back from.

Past the halfway point of the King Crab season, man and machine alike show signs of wear under the brutal hand of the Bering Sea. While repairs can be made to the equipment, the fishermen must dig deep to soldier on in a place where nature rules.

The polar ice pack invades the opilio crab grounds, forcing the captains to make a decision: grab their gear and run, or keep fishing and fight the floes. Two deckhands fall victim to an ice assault; a captain's troubles are compounded by a call home.