Battlefish

Netflix named a conference room after it. Then it stayed one season.

Aaron Walker, deckhand on the Oppor-Tuna-Ty, told the Chinook Observer that Netflix had hung the title on a room at headquarters. He said that on 21 September 2018, the day all eight episodes dropped. He would not talk money. "It's not millions," his crewmate Craig Brewer added, laughing. Local rumor put the production at $11 million, a whole Astoria hotel rented for two months, a 16-person ground crew, latestnetflix.com maintains, one camera operator per boat. Treat the number as rumor. Walker would only confirm they got paid.

Walker wanted an R-rated fishing show. Uncensored, raw, savage, the first West Coast tuna series. Brewer called it Dexter meets Wicked Tuna, same producer. The producer had shown up at the Ilwaco Tuna Club kickoff in June 2016. They took him fishing. There had been talk of a Pacific Graveyard series, then Deadliest Catch: Dungeon Cove beat it out. For a while Pilgrim even thought Oppor-Tuna-Ty were sport fishermen, not commercial. The crew's pitch was old school versus new school. Faster boat, fish the same day, sell the freshest albacore in town unless you have a helicopter.

Gag orders held until premiere day. The cameras lived on that boat for 41 days of a two-month stay. Seven GoPros. Walker said you are mic'd all day, trying not to embarrass yourself. Every push-off put at least $1,500 on the table. Their single-day record was 280 tuna. The 2017 season was a tough one. He said they looked like they had been at war.

Five boats, one bar. Pilgrim Media Group made it. Craig Piligian and Mike Nichols executive produced. Nichols already ran Wicked Tuna off New England. Seattle Times stressed a later correction. This is a Pilgrim show streamed by Netflix, not a co-production. The fleet is the Judy S, the TNT, the Intrepid, the Oppor-Tuna-Ty, and the Ashley Nicole, working Ilwaco, Warrenton, and Westport across the Columbia River Bar, the ugly mouth of the Graveyard of the Pacific. Nichols hired only camera ops who had already done time on fishing boats. He had learned the hard way. Day-one seasickness kills a shoot. , ,

The TNT did not want the gig. Nichols said a lot of people jump. These crews said maybe. TNT had to be chased. They were too busy fishing. Then they let a camera guy on. That crew is captain Karl Travenshek, the only one from a fishing family, plus deckhands Thomas Bell and Thor Anderson in the world's dirtiest T-shirts. Clatsop News called the schooner the blue canoe. Cameraman Kyle Haggerty, a Wicked Tuna veteran, rode with them all day with GoPros, a drone, and a main camera. The hold sits at minus 27 to minus 30, so they can stay out about two weeks. Thomas's 2017 tuna season was his last. By January 2018 he and his wife Sara were in Grass Valley, California. He missed the ocean. He slept in his own bed. ,

Judy S is the traditional boat. Malissa comes aboard to prove she can do the job better than a guy, then works through a painful injury. Greenhorn Andre struggles, then his attitude becomes the problem. Intrepid finds a hole, then the engine dies, then Captain Jake doubts a new deckhand. Ashley Nicole's Justin goes home for the birth of his second son. Aaron mourns his daughter. The solar eclipse episode asks whether the sky will ruin the bite. ,

Bustle spent premiere day guessing at a season 2 off Netflix completion rates. A second season never came. The conference room, if it existed, outlived the series. ,