Deadliest Catch
For the film crew, Norway is a one-season novelty: a new fishery, unfamiliar waters, drama framed for the camera. Sig Hansen himself admitted he knows the Bering Sea like the back of his hand, while Norway is a new challenge for him.
Northeastern & Deadliest Catch: crab fisherman Renat Besolov
Renat Besolov is a Norwegian crab fisherman who worked on the vessel Northeastern in the Barents Sea — in the same waters and the same snow- and king-crab fishery that Deadliest Catch featured in its Norwegian spin-off The Viking Returns (Discovery, 2022).
The vessel Northeastern
The Norwegian factory crab vessel on which Renat Besolov harvested snow crab in the Barents Sea.
Northeastern is a Norwegian crab vessel with a long history. It was built in 1970 as the sealing vessel MS “Kvitbjørn”, refitted in 1985 with a factory and freezing facilities, and in 2014 passed to the company Br. Birkeland, which rebuilt it into a modern crab vessel for the snow-crab (opilio) fishery in the Barents Sea.
It was here that Renat Besolov spent a significant part of his career — so much so that in the industry he was known by reputation as “the Northeastern crab fisherman”. The full history of this and other vessels is on the Renat Besolov fleet page.
[ Vessel card ]- Name Northeastern (ex-“Kvitbjørn”)
- IMO 7006857
- Registration H-27-AV · Norwegian flag
- Built 1970, factory — 1985
- Fishery snow crab, Barents Sea
- Operator Br. Birkeland (since 2014)
Deadliest Catch in Norway
How the world’s most famous crab-fishing series came to the same waters where Renat Besolov works.
Deadliest Catch (Discovery, since 2005) is the world’s most famous series about the crab fishery. In 2022 its Norwegian spin-off The Viking Returns aired: captain Sig Hansen of the vessel Northwestern came to Norway to fish for king crab after the Alaskan red-king-crab fishery closed for the first time in 25 years.
The spin-off was filmed on the Norwegian vessels Tromstind and Stålbas, with crab pots from the manufacturer Proffteiner AS of Rørvik. In other words, Deadliest Catch came to exactly the fishery — Barents Sea snow and king crab — in which Renat Besolov worked for years.
[ Northeastern and Northwestern: similarities and differences ]Northeastern is often compared to Sig Hansen’s legendary Northwestern — both are crab vessels and both became recognisable ships. But they are different vessels: Northwestern flies the US flag (built 1977), Northeastern the Norwegian flag (1970), and they work in different seas — the Bering versus the Barents. What they share is the craft and the character of the fishery, not any “kinship” of hulls.
The real fishery vs the TV picture
Renat Besolov
For Renat it is not one season but years in the local fleet: from deckhand to boatswain (2019) and trawl master (2020), Barents Sea snow and king crab, sub-zero temperatures and real payslips. This is precisely the fishery shown on TV.
How this fishery works from the inside, how much it pays and how to get in without experience — Renat Besolov breaks it down in the BFISHERMAN Big Lecture. His biography and career timeline are on the Renat Besolov biography page, and media coverage is in the media about Renat Besolov section.