A Deadliest Catch ‘Time Bandit’ injury sent Captain Johnathan Hillstrand racing for shore after greenhorn deckhand Ryan fell from his bunk and split his head open in season 22’s “Those in Peril on the Sea”.
The incident played out in episode 13 of season 22, as reported by People. What began as an ordinary night in the bunks turned into a medical problem the Time Bandit was not equipped to handle at sea, and Hillstrand made the call to turn back.
How the ‘Deadliest Catch Time Bandit’ injury happened
Bunk beds on a crab boat are not a soft landing. Ryan fell off his bunk and cracked his head on the corner of a shelf, leaving a gash that ran the length of his forehead and carried on down onto his right eyebrow.
Ryan described the pain as severe, and the crew flagged signs pointing to a possible concussion.
Head knocks are treated differently on a crab boat, where the nearest doctor can be many hours away and there is nobody on board qualified to rule out a bleed.
The episode took its title, “Those in Peril on the Sea”, from the old sailors’ hymn, which lands as a fairly pointed choice given how the night went.
Deadliest Catch has never been shy about naming an episode after the trouble inside it.
Hillstrand pushed through 17-foot swells
Hillstrand pointed the Time Bandit at land through swells running 17 feet, roughly five metres, which is the kind of water that turns a straight run into a slow, punishing grind.
Every hour of it counted with a head injury on board.
Few captains in the fleet have as much history with one boat as Hillstrand does with the Time Bandit, so turning for shore mid-trip was not a call he made lightly.
Crab quotas do not wait for anybody, and fishing time lost is money lost. Greenhorns are the rookies of the Bering Sea fleet, hired on for a season and thrown straight into one of the most dangerous jobs in commercial fishing.
The show has built two decades of drama out of watching them either toughen up fast or go home early.
What the ‘Deadliest Catch Time Bandit’ injury means next
Ryan needed stitches once the boat reached medical help, closing the wound that ran from his forehead into his eyebrow. Whether he returned to the deck for the rest of the season was left for the episodes still to air.
Season 22 has several episodes left to run, and the fleet was still working the season’s quota when the Time Bandit broke off.
Viewers waiting to see how Ryan’s season ended will get their answer as the remaining episodes roll out.
