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I probably spend too much time on Twitter.

A lot of people look at the social media platform and ask, “what’s the point?” I don’t need to know about every trip my friend takes to Starbucks or every thought that runs through their head in a given day.

But it’s a good tool for journalists and occasionally you run into some new information or a story worth digging into.

This past week, I was adding to my massive list of “fish news” sources and came across Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s official feed. She had just tweeted about the upcoming season 12 premiere of “Deadliest Catch,” and revealed that she had a family connection to the show.

 

 

Now I know “Deadliest Catch” and other commercial fishing TV shows are for entertainment and aren’t hard-hitting documentary material, but the connection serves as a nice reminder that, despite the Hollywood of it all, these crews are hard at work.

23-year-old Sean Dwyer, will be the youngest skipper in the history of the show.

23-year-old Sean Dwyer will be the youngest skipper in the history of the show. Deadliest Catch photoSean’s dad (and Murkowski’s cousin’s husband), Pat Dwyer was a well-established Bering Sea fisherman before tragically succumbing to ALS in the summer of 2013.

According to John Gray, one of the show’s executive producers, Pat had purchased a boat, the Brenna A, with the specific goal of setting Sean up for the future. He said Sean being on the show this season will tell the “story of Sean carrying the torch from his father into captaincy.”

Sean will be working to catch Captain Sig Hansen’s 290,000 pounds of Bairdi crab.

Surely the show’s producers will hit this storyline hard throughout its next season, but don’t let that make you scoff at the story.

Behind the show designed to entertain the masses is a real fishing family.

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Samuel Hill is the former associate editor for National Fisherman. He is a graduate of the University of Southern Maine where he got his start in journalism at the campus’ newspaper, the Free Press. He has also written for the Bangor Daily News, the Outline, Motherboard and other publications about technology and culture.

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