Deadliest Catch Got Us All Fooled with Faking a Storm, and Nobody Noticed

But when actual events fail to be sufficiently exciting to the audience, creative editing of footage may come to the rescue.

Take, for example, Deadliest Catch on the Discovery channel. Deadliest Catch is a long-running reality show, currently 18 seasons have been made. The name is half-misleading.

The show follows crab fishermen prowling in the Bering Sea during the Alaskan king crab and snow crab fishing seasons, and crabs hardly can be called deadly adversaries.

But on the other hand, being a fisherman in a crab fishing boat on the Bering Sea is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world thanks to the severe weather conditions, including frigid gales, rough waves, ice floating around the boat and forming on it, as well as to the need to operate heavy machinery on the rolling boat deck.

So, this catch is indeed paid for by deaths and injuries of fishermen.

But even in such conditions, a fisherman's job is still mostly boring drudgery, so, as it seems, the show's crew is not above the temptation to make events more exciting.

For example, they have been accused of faking a storm for the premiere episode of Season 4, which involves the small fishing boat called the Wizard getting caught in a terrible situation, as flooding opens while it is being pounded by massive waves.

Of course, the production crew of Deadliest Catch lacked money and means of filming a fake storm. But, as a report by Hollywood Reporter goes, all they needed to make the situation appear like a deadly crisis, was editing together two unrelated incidents.

Hollywood Reporter obtained a Deadliest Catch production document which stated:

"Combine Wizard leak story on 9/26 with the Wizard being hit by a big wave on 10/1 and 10/2. The fiction we are constructing is that the big wave hit the Wizard on their steam up to Dutch [Dutch Harbor] — caused a leak in Lenny's stateroom."

Such creative editing is not uncommon among reality shows. The incident was only worth reporting because Discovery considers Deadliest Catch to be a documentary, supposed to be held to the highest standard.

While Discovery president John Ford said that the outline in question was an early, rejected draft, it is obvious that footage from different days was combined for the episode.

So don't be too quick to trust reality shows.