Working on the Edge by Spike Walker

Working on the Edge by Spike Walker

In a breathtaking, action-packed account that combines his personal story with the stories of survivors of the industry's most harrowing disasters, Spike Walker's Working on the Edge re-creates the boom years of Alaskan crab fishing and the crash that followed.

No profession pits man against nature more brutally than king crab fishing in the frigid, unpredictable waters of the Bering Sea. The yearly death toll is staggering (forty-two men in 1988 alone); the conditions are beyond most imaginations (90-mph Arctic winds, 25-foot seas, and super-human stretches of on-deck labor); but the payback, if one survives can be tens of thousands of dollars for a month-long season. Walker rivetingly depicts the modern-day gold rush that drew hundreds of fortune-and adventure-hunters to Alaska's dangerous waters.

Spike Walker worked as a crewman on some of Alaska's most successful crab boats for nine seasons. Spike Walker has worked in the offshore oilfields of Louisiana and Texas, as a certified commercial deep-sea diver along the Mississippi River, and as a logger in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Alaska, in addition to crab fishing.