May 12, 2015
UW wave expert to appear tonight on TV’s ‘The Deadliest Catch’
The lead-up to the 11th season of The Deadliest Catch, the hit reality TV show about crab fishing in Alaska, is “The Bait,” in which captains of crab boats discuss some of the elements featured on the program.
Tonight a University of Washington oceanographer will talk to the captains about one of the main reasons that the show gets its name: big waves.
Jim Thomson, an oceanographer with the UW Applied Physics Laboratory, will be on the segment that first airs Tuesday, May 12 at 9 p.m.
“I’m there to talk about how waves form, how they break, and the mechanics of ocean waves,” Thomson said.
The segment’s taping in Seattle was unscripted and very interactive, he said, with the captains asking questions about specific scenarios or storms. At first people were a little skeptical, he said, but then warmed up when they found out that he wasn’t just “some nerd at a chalkboard.”
“They realized that I’m a mariner, too, and I spend a lot of time on the water — that we’re more alike than different,” Thomson said.
He will appear in a second episode later this season, in which the producers simulate a wave breaking on a person. Thomson helps calculate the forces involved to see whether they would be enough to knock someone over.
Thomson published a paper last summer on the recent emergence of big Arctic Ocean waves, and he will lead a project this fall to measure ocean conditions in newly ice-free Arctic waters.
