The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 289: Shawn Pomrenke—There's No Place Like Nome

Episode Date: December 6, 2022

Shawn Pomrenke of Bering Sea Gold shares the circumstances that led him to drop out of high school, how he used his work ethic and MacGyver skills to become a multi-million-dollar gold prospector, and why he describes being 100 feet below an ice shelf in the frigid Bering Sea as... relaxing. That is, until his regulator freezes and the oxygen flow stops—then it gets sporty.

Welcome to the way I heard it, episode number 289. This one is called There's No Place Like Nome, partially because there's not, and also because I'm terribly clever. Chuck, your thoughts? I certainly think you have your clever moments, and as soon as you did that, I did chuckle. So you did say there's no place like Nome. My guest is Sean Pomeranke.

He has a funny last name and a fascinating life story. And if you're familiar with him, it's because you watch the hit TV show. Bering C Gold, which I've had the pleasure of narrating now for at least 10 years. Although, how many seasons did you say IMB is IMD? I didn't get that from IMDB. That's probably where I should go. You probably should.

It gets very strange, friends, when you work on a show for a long time, and there are lots of reruns and the new episodes take place in different seasons. Like, the show is Bering Sea Gold, and there's an ice mining season, and there's the summer season. And the show is basically now in constant production, and it has introduced many millions of people, or maybe reintroduced them, I should say, to a different part of the Bering Sea. Deadliest Catch, of course, takes place mostly north of Dutch Harbor. Bering Sea Gold takes place off the shore of Nome. Nome, Alaska, of course, is up there. toward the top of the state.

That's the cold part. And the dark part. Yes. Gnome shapes you. Nome will define you. And that's part of what I talked to Sean about. He has a great love for his adopted city of Nome. He grew up somewhere in Minnesota, wound up going to school up there as a young teenager.

If you're not familiar with the show, Sean Pumranke has been. become Mr. Gold. He's not just a character. He's exactly who he is. And our cameras have been following him now for over a decade and watched him build a literal empire. Sean is, he dropped out of high school. There was never a thought of college.

And I wanted him on this podcast because he's about as authentic and real a human as I think you're going to find in the world of television. And he prospered. He prospered as a result of working his ass off. And his road was a crooked one, but it began with a simple question, do you need any help down there?

He asked a couple of mechanics on the way home from school one day. And next thing you know, he's a multimillionaire pulling gold off the bottom of the Bering Sea. And if you think that's challenging, you are correct. Yes, and it is season 15 that begins December 6th, 2022, which is the day this episode will drop. Yeah, he describes three times where he, you know, almost checked out, almost passed out underwater where he's like 180 feet away from the hole and his air is no longer working.

And I can't even imagine that. You know what, I can. It happened to me once years ago during Shark Week. on a test dive. I ran out of air. But you were surrounded by sharks and only 90 feet underwater. So totally different situation, Mike.

But there was no ice over the time. And there was no ice. There's no ice. So it's like, okay, I know the way out is up. When you run out of air under an ice shelf or under any fixed platform, manmade or otherwise, it's a whole different deal. In fact, I think cave diving,

if I remember right, is the most hazardous thing you can do for fun or sport, except maybe for hang gliding is up there too. But to run out of air underwater and underneath the ice, that's a whole different kind of terror. I know I'm not alone. You know, the first time I saw this show, your sphincter will slam shut when you watch these guys mining for gold on the floor of the Bering Sea with their giant hoses sucking up the gold for hours at a time in frigid, frigid water. There's just no shortcuts.

Are there, Chuck? No. That was where I was supposed to say something. I was just captivated by your monologue. Do you understand how this works, right? I just talk for a while and I stop and then you hop in. You're right. I'm going to pick up on that.

Next time, next time I'm going to be right there. Johnny on the spot, right for you. Hey, this is episode 289. and it's called There's no place like Noam. That's correct. And as you listen, you'll take from the conversation whatever you want to take from it.

But this is a guy who dropped out of high school. And I'm not recommending that dropping out of high school is the way forward. But I am saying that with a work ethic and with an ability to fix or repair pretty much anything,

with the right level of humility, in Sean's case, my favorite part of this, Chuck, is when he's talking about the impact the cameras have on him. Because so many people, especially in the reality world, the cameras will either make you pull your punches and hedge your bets or swing for the fences. Or lean in, yeah. Right. None of that happens with Sean Pomeranke.

He just doesn't give a damn. He just wants to get all the gold off the floor of the Bering Sea. and the fact that our cameras are there is neither here nor there for him. That makes him an interesting guy, and I hope you enjoy our conversation. It is, as Chuck just mentioned, episode 289. There's no place like Noam.

Right after this. Thank you. Well, people are still raving, raving. I tell you, about my mother's performance in the latest Pure Talk commercial, and if you haven't seen it, I encourage you to give it a look on my Facebook page and read the comments. They're hysterical. In this commercial, you'll not only see Peggy Roe gently criticizing her oldest son

for his longstanding and well-established commitment issues, you'll learn about the latest offer from Pure Talk, which includes unlimited talk, text, and data for just $3499 a month with no contracts and no commitments of any kind. You can see why I love these guys. If, on the other hand, you have better things to do with your time than watch my mom and me be impossibly charming together, then allow me to remind you, here, without all the cleverness and charm, that unlimited talk, text, and data on a blazing fast network for just 3499 a month

really is an unmitigated bargain from an American wireless company that keeps all their customer service in this country, supports our veterans in a meaningful way, as well as the MicroWorks Foundation, and allows me to exploit my own mother in a national advertising campaign. Do what my mom did. Get yourself unlimited high-speed data for just $3499 a month. At puretalk.com slash row. You can switch in as little as 10 minutes at puretalk.com slash row. So here it is then.

The first words out of Sean Pomeranke's mouth he's doing sweat equity labor in his daughter's bedroom painting last night till 2 a.m. Is that what you said? Kitchen, yes. Kitchen. Yeah, paint it until 2 o'clock in the morning. What color are you painting the kitchen? Oh, wait a minute. Hold on, Mike.

Mike, are you on the right Wi-Fi? Oh, man, that's a good question. Good catch, Chuck. Switching a... That's why Ross was having difficulty. That's what happened. this thing upstairs the other day. No. I got to make you a checklist to go through. You want me to come back in the room? Sorry, Sean. It's a

total rookie mistake. No problem. We're good. I think it's getting up to speed now. Yeah, Ross, as soon as we started recording, he said like five words and then went all wonky because he's on the wrong. Damn. Wi-Fi. It's just too many fucking things, guys. You know, it's just too many things. All right. Are we all good? You look solid now. That's good. All right. I feel pretty. Let's open it again.

Let's do it. We're recording. So whenever you want to... So what do you mean by let's open it again? You're not going to count it. You're just going to say, go? Sure, I can count in if you like, but I like to count to 50. Oh, my God. Sean, welcome to the adventure. That is the way I heard it. Thank you for making time for whatever this is. How are you? I'm good. I'm good.

Life's good. You look exactly like I would imagine a gold miner would look who's really not even in the process of mining gold. You're just there. This is the face I've become accustomed to seeing twice a week and millions of people are accustomed to seeing. You are in life as you are on the show. Just a guy with a beard and a stocking cap and a t-shirt. Just pulling the riches out of the ground. Yeah.

I mean, you can't make this up. It's been a hell of an adventure. Yeah, man. I was just honestly sitting here wondering how to approach this conversation, but I think you just answered it. It's treasure hunting. You're a treasure hunter in like every sense of the word. And I got to be honest, when I saw the pilot for this thing, I just didn't understand what I was looking at. So I think maybe the sensible thing to do, a lot of people listening to this are familiar with Bering Sea Gold. They'll know your face. But a lot of people don't quite understand all the different ways a fella can hunt for gold. And it seems to me that of all

those different ways, yours is far and away the craziest, certainly the most treacherous. Well, you can look for gold inland on dry land or you can look for gold in the ocean. And it's this kind of where I found my niche. When I started in the ocean, I was diving like most of the other guys on the show with a suction dredge and you can see the gold on the ocean floor and it was the harder you worked the more you made so it was i was hooked the first year i did it well it's super simple math that way and i want to get into that but i also want to make sure people understand that the seeing gold lying there on the ocean floor will do something to your brain that's primal it's just so outrageous that it's just lying there waiting to be scooped up. But there's a parallel when you're

flicking around on the TV and you stumble across a bunch of guys standing on three or four feet of ice on the Bering Sea and they cut a hole in the ice and then they freaking jump in. And then they sink to the bottom with a giant hose and they stay down there. Not for minutes, but for hours at a time. Sucking up the riches, I'm telling you, optically, it's just one of those images that looking back, it changed TV, Sean. And you've been on the forefront of that, and that's got to be a kick. Wait till you see this season. It gets even better. But me, I've done it for so long now. It's when I get down on the bottom, hopping that hole and dive down to the bottom under the ice. that's kind of relaxing.

Wow. There's no phone going off. There's nobody bugged you really. I mean, you got a guy on the column that bothered you a little bit once in a while. But once you're down there, you forget about what's above you. And this last season was pretty interesting.

Before we get to that, the other point I wanted to make, just so people understand it, is deadliest catch came first, right? Yes. I mean, the average person can't find the Bering Sea on the globe. But after 20 years of this, we've sort of introduced the world, really, you know, to your backyard, to your place of work. And so after four or five seasons of Deadliest Catch, people saw people die.

And people realize that you can't script the Bering Sea. And everything we're looking at is super, super real. and this is a very, very dangerous place, right? We had it burned into people's heads that if you fall off of a crab boat, you're going to be dead in three minutes if we don't get you out of there. So part of what makes this show so interesting for me, just as the narrator, but I know for a lot of viewers too, is that all of a sudden this body of water that became synonymous with certain death

was the thing that you were diving into on purpose and then swimming to the bottom with a hose to suck up gold because, and I'm quoting you right now going back roughly 90 seconds, because it's relaxing. You have to understand, you have to understand how jacked up that is for millions of viewers.

Well, I don't know. It's just once I get underwater, it's where I feel comfortable and where I mean I don't know what it is about being underneath the ice and and then once you start seeing gold it kind of just takes over and you're like okay this is good we're making money can you remember and tell me about the first time that feeling washed over you When you were down there, you were alone, you saw the gold. And like, did something click in your brain? Did something like physically change in your body?

The very first time I went through the ice, we were nowhere near to what you see today. It was a cheap suit, cheap goggles, probably like a... little bicycle air compressor for air. Yeah, I'll have one of my buddies up there pumping. And it was freezing up. And I remember I was down for like, what we did, we took a piece of pipe and we went out and sludge-handered it into the grill the hole through the ice and then pounded a two-inch piece of pipe into the bottom of the ocean floor.

And then used a high-lift jack, jacked it up, pulled it out. panned it and it was like, oh shit, there's, there's cold here. Yeah. And we slapped together this, this, uh, you know, Minnesota fish house and went out and, and froze my ass off. And air froze up and blue lips and freezing and I remember seeing the gold at what I got down there. And I was like, oh, man, you can see it. But I was, I'm trying to remember how old. I was, I was, I'm maybe early 20s. Yeah. Maybe not even 20, maybe 19.

You know, and of course, I took my diving course about three or four pages in a dive book. Was this a sober endeavor? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. And I mean, even to this day, I'm still not certified to dive, but.

You're kidding me. Certifiable, brother. Certifiable is the word you're looking for. So you grew up in Nome, generationally. You're out of Alaska? No, originally we're from Minnesota. I started out in central Minnesota, a little town called Peers. That's where a lot of my family, my mom's family, and my dad's family, they're all from central Minnesota.

But then moved into Minneapolis. I got to run the streets of Minneapolis until I was, 13. And then I moved to Alaska and it was like, okay, you go from downtown Minneapolis to Nome, Alaska. It was a lot of freedom. Of course, I kind of just did whatever I wanted. Moved out when I was 16, had a job, was able to pay rent. What was your first job? my first i mean i had jobs in minnesota pushing oh sorry the one that you paid rent for in nome oh i was working for um uh god martinsonsons the martinsons and uh doing service and heavy equipment at 16 your mechanic yeah and so i was going to school playing ball and then work until 10 o'clock

every night so you know full disclosure the real reason i wanted to have you on was to was to was to thank you face to face. You sent me a small vial of gold from the floor of the Bering Sea back in, I guess it was 2016, for a fundraiser for my foundation. First of all, that was super cool of you to do. But I remember the video that you sent with it. It was only 10 seconds long.

No one sends 10 second videos. You like held the gold out like this. You said, here it is, Mike Rowe, $500 worth of gold off the bottom of the barrens. I built my empire with hard work and a wrench. Good luck to you. I was like, what? I built my empire with hard work and a wrench. I've wanted to ask you ever since that it really started then with the mindset and the work ethic of a mechanic. Yeah. In home, you have very limited resources. So if you can't keep old junk running, you're not going to make it.

it as a minor. You have to be a McGiver of sorts. Because to get parts, there's no next day shipping to know them. You pay for next day you're lucky if you see it within the week or three or four days. If you're lucky.

You have to improvise it and be able to just come up with different ways to fix things to get you by until you can get the right parts or you go steal it off of somebody else's piece of equipment and borrow it for a little bit and bring it back. Because you don't have very many days in the summer, but I've tried some different things out this winter that I think is going to really change the ice mining future of ice mining. Like what? Can you talk about it?

I'm bringing some head. I don't want to screw up the show, but I've had a little. little dozer out on the ice, but now I've brought a mini excavator. Oh, that's a game changer. On the ice. Oh, yeah. Yeah. For cutting the holes and stuff, it's changed.

I went from, okay, this is more, more of a prospecting kind of finding spots for the summer for come in to, oh, boy, we're going to make some money doing this now. We're going to make some real money doing it. Well, I hope so. Because, you know, this is another big thing. I don't think people fully appreciate from watching the show. You get the sense that you better have a great work ethic. You get the sense that you better have balls the size of fists.

You get the sense that you better be willing and able to fix and McGive or anything. But there's this other thing, right? It's this entrepreneurial thing. It's this willingness to assume financial risk, not just life and death risk. which gets all the headlines, deservedly so. But you go 800 grand in the whole, you know, betting on you, betting on technology, betting on things you can't control, like the weather. You know, and I mean, it's such an interesting combination of things

that a successful minor has to become that I don't know that there's a playbook for it. You certainly don't go to college for it. Or finish high school. How far did you go? 11th. 11th grade. So wait a minute. So you drop out of the 11th grade when you're in Minnesota.

In Nome. In Nome. In Nome, right. Oh, my God. So you drop out of high school. What's your old man think at this point? People should know this is a family operation. At that point, you weren't really talking.

So I got the teacher pregnant. Well, she was a teacher. She was the native programs director. I'd ask how that happened, but I mean... I think we know how it happened, Chuck. The way it always happens. The usual way? She was working at the school.

I was going to school. Because I heard earlier, well, my daughter and her being 29 years old, They were like, hmm. I didn't want to pry, but before the interview started, I asked Sean, you know, how's it gone? And he said, well, I was up half the night painting my daughter's kitchen. I'm like, well, how old's your daughter? 29. How old are you?

47. 20. Okay, well, there you go. But I don't want to assume too much. Is your daughter, would she the product of your teachers? You and the teacher? You and the Native American? Oh.

Yes. Yes. Oh, oh, oh. All right, wait, man, wait, minute, wait, minute. So you're in 11th grade. You stay after school one day. When she was born, I think it was. I made it through 11th into 12th grade and never finished my senior year.

No, but you finished some other things, didn't you? I had to buy diapers and pay rent. Holy cow. Wait a minute. All right. So you get your teacher pregnant in high school. Yeah. She gives birth and you start looking after helping contribute to her and raising your daughter together.

That's extraordinary, Sean. I don't believe we've covered that in an episode of Bering C. Gold yet. Oh, there's a lot we haven't covered. All right. I jotted a few down when I talked to you last night. D-Dum. I love stories like this seven years ago. a guy named Ben Still was a musician.

He had zero interest in running a food company, but he was annoyed that so much imported meat was being deceptively marketed and labeled as domestic and decided to fix the problem. The result was a company called Good Ranchers. It's a completely honest, totally transparent meat company that deals directly with American farms and ranches and promises to deliver high-quality American-grown meat

for a fair price. Today, that promise. and Ben's absolute determination to keep it has not only propelled good ranchers into the top tier of meat delivery companies, it's fueled enormous awareness among meteors like me, that we have all been affirmatively deceived by policies that allow imported me to be marketed as domestic. That's the reason I switch to good ranchers. If I'm being honest, though, I doubt that I would have stayed this long had the quality not been so exceptional. Every single cut I've devoured from Good Ranchers has been straight up delicious, and every morsel was raised on a small American farm or ranch. Give them a try.

Subscriptions are affordable and flexible. In fact, if you start your plan today, you'll get free meat for life and $40 off your first order. Just use code mic at good ranchers.com. Free meat for life, $40 off your first order. Good Ranchers.com. delivered. If you could eat a steer, if you could eat a cow, don't take a chance on a foreign ranch, get good ranchers now. Hey-haw! Well, I mean, it's just like on the one hand, it's fun and it's kind titillating, but on the other hand, I think it's useful, maybe even important for people to

understand that there's always time to course correct. You're a multi-millionaire today. You still, I mean, I'm staring at your face right now and you look like work, Sean. You look. You look. like hard work. But here you are. Somehow or another, before you're 50, you're worth millions of dollars. Your work ethic has never gone away. You never mail it in. You don't cheat. You can't cheat in this line of work. So that's why I'm asking about your past, because ultimately, people try and make sense out of success today. And it always makes me laugh because there is no one sure path to it. That's for damn sure. Well, the people that, you know, oh, you're lucky, you're lucky. You're lucky. No, it's not luck. It's get up every morning, go to work and put 110% into everything

you're doing every day. And towards the end of the summer, you know, I get, every once in a while reads, oh, he's not drugs, he's this, he's that. I was like, okay, how about you work eight months, seven days a week, 16 hours a day, and see what. what you look like at the end of those eight months. You know, having kids at a young age like I did, it just made me who I am. It was like, okay, I got to take care of this little human. I got to get up. I got to go to work.

But you got to find something that you love to do. I mean, you can't be successful in a job that you hate. If you hate getting up, going to work, that's, not going to be where you're going to make your millions. You've got to find something that you want. You're like, okay, I'm going to work today, and you're happy, and you go and you, and then you start finding good people. I mean, I got Trevor and Dennis and Cody. These guys have been following me around Alaska, and you find good people, and you pull them in, and you grab them, and you keep them close and you take care of them and they take care of you. And there's no way I would be

where I'm at today without those key guys, you know. That's a leadership lesson that normally comes out of the final year of somebody getting their MBA. In fact, I don't even know that it's a thing you can teach. You either learn that the easy way or you learn it the hard way. But if you don't learn it, right? If you don't learn that your team is your thing, whether you're of a boat or the executive producer of a TV show or whatever it is. And look, that's to your credit too. It's not just hard work. A lot of guys would have said, okay, look, I got this little human. I brought it into the world. It was an accident. But pass. I'm moving. I'm going somewhere else. Thousands of guys do that every day. You didn't. You stuck. And to me, that does put you in a

different category of a person. So, I mean, good on you for that, but I just didn't want to just kind of glance over it because a lot of guys don't do that. A lot of guys don't give a crap about their team and they don't give a crap about the results of, you know, some extracurricular activity with their teacher, for God's sakes. I can't believe it. 11th grade. It kept me after school to clap the erasers. You were clapping something else. I was having fun, though. Well, you know what? That's another thing I wanted to ask you about.

Even when you're frozen, even when the snot is frozen on your mustache and the sea is frozen on your beard and you're having a day, it looks like you're having fun. Even on the worst days, it looks like you're still in on the joke somehow. I mean, I'll have my days. It's crappy. It's 20 below and blowing and, you know, 40 miles an hour. there's nobody leaving their homes and we're out on the ice going to work. This is a shitty job, but we're going to do it. How important is that mentality like that band of brothers?

Because I know it exists on my end. You know, when I talk to the cameramen and the audio guys who actually are out there with you, they're cut from a different cloth. Clearly, minors are too. What's it been like to work with that particular flage? of Hollywood. I mean, I've made some really good friends. When you're spending 12 hours, 14, 60 hours a day with somebody,

you get to know them as much as they get to know you. At my first Todd Stanley, he was my producer for the first, I don't know how many years. And then we're still good friends since today. And then he went on to do something else. and I think I went through like three or four producers in two weeks. Yeah. Yeah. Shocking.

You're putting your life out there for everybody, but you're on the phone call, like a real personal, not anything that needs to be. I'm doing my job. I'm like, give me five minutes, and I'll be over and back to the boat and we'll get back to work. Just give me my five minutes. And he's, no, I'm doing my job.

I was like, oh, yeah. I was like, okay, I'm going to have to end this call. And then you did your job. And I just didn't talk to him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He was, he's like asking me questions.

And it was like, you're not here right now, buddy. I was like, either you got to have a certain respect for each other. Because we're both doing a job and we both have to get it done. But, you know, the guys that have, that I click with are as passionate about. making TV as I am about making gold. So you want to find that combination. This to me, it's at the heart of one of the most interesting relationships that are out there and one that a lot of people don't understand.

But the kind of TV show that we're talking about now combined with the kind of work you do day in and day out, it requires a relationship unlike anything else. And Chuck, just so you know, this guy he's talking about, Todd Stanley, Todd, Stanley, Todd was one of the originals. He and his brother Doug up on the Bering Sea for the pilots and the very, very early days of Deadliest Catch. And Todd, Todd was in the room when Phil Harris died. Todd was there. Todd was there with the camera. And, you know, when he told me this story, it was so powerful because it's just one of those moments that as a producer, you realize this is so relevant and important to the audience, but as a human, you realize, what the hell am I doing with this camera? Where should I be pointing it? So Todd, in that moment, put the camera down and just said, no, I'm not going to do this.

It was Phil Harris who called him over, told him to pick up the camera and said, we have to finish the story. Oh. And, dude, I'll tell you, man, I actually wrote about it of my book because it's really hard for people to understand how personal and intimate that is. It's obviously different than not having the privacy to make a phone call, but it's all cut from the same thing. And if you guys don't have that shorthand in place, then you don't have trust. And if you don't have trust when it's 20 below on the frozen Bering Sea, then you're in danger.

Yeah. Have you talked to Todd lately? Lately. It's been a couple of months when he was my producer. Single guy. Still cut that single mentality, but now he's married with a couple of kids. So he's like, man, I'm loving this. This is amazing. So Todd's an amazing producer, amazing person, just all around. My dad and I've never really seen eye to eye, and he was able

to get us to start talking. And so maybe we need to get Todd back up to No. Maybe so. But I wonder, how did the presence of cameras change the way you work? If it did, really just what's it been like now? I think we're in, what, season 10, season 11? 11. It's 15.

I just looked it up. It's season 15 starts December 6th, 8 p.m. Discovery Channel. Wait a minute. Are you kidding me? I think they counted a couple of ice as their old seasons. Oh, yeah. That's why it's impossible to keep track. The show's always on.

It's 12 or 13 years now. Yeah, easily. I mean, Catch is season 19, and I know that it started about five years into that, so that would make sense. But that's my question. The cameras can really have a powerful impact. In some cases,

they turn people into other versions. versions of themselves. And in some cases, it just makes you more of who you already were. If that makes sense? Yeah. I know what you're saying. So like when we first started, it was, oh, I don't want to, I don't want to look like an idiot. I don't want to look like an asshole. I don't want to look stupid. So you're kind of, you know, overthinking it. And then it was like, oh, I don't know if I want anybody to see this. And then finally it was like, I don't know. Like, fuck it. Let's just get this. Let's do it. And I quit worrying about, you know, looking like failing on TV or giving away secrets because, you know what? It's, you can follow me, but it's the attention to detail that you'll never figure out because it takes experience to get to that.

Yeah. And so go ahead, try. And then, you know, after a while, it's just having cameras around as normal. No, you know. I think part of what happened in this whole business, and for me anyway, you know, years ago when Dirty Jobs was getting started, I don't remember exactly when I realized it, but what you just said is the absolute truth. The second you become willing to take the pie in the face or to let people see you, not at your best, you know, maybe swing and miss, right? when that starts to happen, that's when they begin to trust you. And that's when they'll spend time with you because that's what makes it real. You know, I remember, I said to Tom Beers, he showed me the original pilot for this thing. And it was just you, man.

There was a shot of you standing on the ice. I don't know if it was a drone or a helicopter, but it pushed in real slow. And then you turned around and your face filled the screen. And I don't remember exactly what you said, but you didn't have to say anything. There was a hole in the ice and it was clear you were going into it. That's when I thought, good God, man. I don't even understand what this show is. I'm going to watch it.

I just want to see if that guy makes it. Oh, there's been a few times where I'm like, I'm not going to make it out of this an ice hole. How many times, seriously, have you thought maybe this is it, where you really seriously thought this is about as risky as it gets? probably it's been about three times where it was like I'm going to pass up before I make it back to the hole where you kind of get that light headed and but you make it to the okay I'm ready to go back down have all three times been where you've run out of air yeah it's the moisture in the air and then if you have any like little the brass usually it's the brass usually it's the brass bidding was always on the back at the connection to the whip to the mask, but then it's the seal nut going into the regulator on your mask. The moisture freezes, and then it just, but now I can you know, pull the hot water out and then hope it thaws out. It's just so, I mean, I get

claustrophobic just thinking about it. I remember, and this is probably a bad, comparison, but I was in Minnesota one year and we dug a hole in the ice. We met this guy who created this device that helped pull cars and trucks that fell through the ice, you know, like in the spring fall, they stay out there. Chuck, they live for months on the ice, whole little towns. And if you wait too long, the ice breaks and your truck falls through. And you can't get it out until the next freeze. And this guy created like a trebice that he would take out onto the ice. And he'd, you know, giant chainsawls, you dig a hole in the ice, and then you dive in,

and you've got the air being pumped to you, and you go down to the car, and you hook bladders up to it, and they inflate, and the whole car floats up to the hole. And you're down there kind of pushing it along, and then this big trebushet comes in and hoist the whole thing out. It's amazing. I remember standing on the bottom of one of those lakes about 40 feet off from the hole and looking straight up at about six feet of ice. And you know how the sun will come through and it's like it's green and dappled and almost kind of beautiful? But you realize the way out is not necessarily up. It's up and over somewhere, somewhere way over there. The point is, how can you describe that to somebody who's never been under the ice before and the terror that must follow when all of a sudden your air is gone?

It's just gone. And I mean, it's just indescribable. We used to, so it was like, oh, if we put more holes on, we can get further out and we don't have to move and we can produce more gold. So, all right, pretty soon we got 80 feet of hose on and you're 30. feet down and 80 feet away it stretched out and it's like oops and you turn around and you look back and look stand 80 feet away that go 30 feet up you're 120 feet away from where you need to be oh that's no good so you just turn around and grab that umbilical and start pulling hopefully it doesn't

then we course we didn't put little floats on the umbilical so it was kind of just laying down so you're pulling your way up to the top and then it hooks around a big rock so you got turn around go back pull it over the rock and then you're trying to gather the umbilical and pull and and then you get to the top are you totally out of breath like when those fittings freeze like you described does it go from oh i'm getting air to no air or is it a slow sort of degradation it's a you get one morning and it's like

and then you're like oh god your mask just kind of sucks towards your face as you try to take a breath and you're like okay time to go this might be a stupid question

but I'm always curious about this what's worse the feeling that you just described firsthand or being topside when one of your guys is down there going through that exact same thing

and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. I dive with Joe, so we got this whole clapped-out air compressor. It was a couple years ago. Maybe it keeps dying. Well, he's like, I think the air compressor died, you know, low on air, and he comes up and he pokes his head out and he looks at it. He sees that I'm pulling on it. Well, I'm trying to get the piece of shit started again.

and he's like, he sees me pulling on it, so he just automatically goes back down. He doesn't even know if you get me sure if I got it wrong or not. He's back down and headed down the hose and going. But, I mean, the worst is being the one under the ice when your air runs out. Again, it's trust. It's like of all the machines in the world ever invented to do anything, what's more important than the compressor that's keeping the air going to your buddy 30 feet down and 80 feet northwest?

passed away from you. I mean, Jesus. We always seem to be using like the one that we had from the summer, from diving in the summer, and it's all war out and barely runs. And we got some wires on the governor and have to keep it ailed up and run the choke about a quarter. I mean, it goes back to the McGuiver thing, right? Everything's held together with Kleenex and spit. There's never enough of anything that you need. nothing is ever functioning at 100% capacity.

Everything is a compromise. But it works. Right. It works. But when did it begin? When did the first person say, hey, look, maybe, maybe we should just dive into the water and swim down there and see if there's any gold lying around? Shameless Plug! Long before she was Peggy Roe, my mom was Peggy Noble, daughter of Carl.

and Thelma Noble. It was her father, Carl, who inspired me to pitch a show called Dirty Jobs to the Discovery Channel and later start a foundation that honored the kind of work Carl Noble did for a living, trade work, skilled labor. That foundation is called MicroWorks, and today I'm proud to tell you that we've helped thousands of people get the training they need to begin a career in the skilled trades. In fact, we'd love to help you. You can apply for a work ethic scholarship right now at microwworks.org. We've set aside 10 million million dollars for this year's applicants. Thanks to a number of very effective fundraisers, including the one with my grandfather's name on the label. I refer, of course, to Noble,

Tennessee whiskey, K-N-O-B-E-L, which is now available in a variety of delicious mash bills, all of which you can peruse at noblespirates.com. In fact, if you spend 100 bucks and use code Carl, C-A-R-L, you'll get one tube of orange-bitter-infused sugar cubes for free. That's code Carl with a C to get nine sugar cubes, ingeniously engineered to make nine perfect old-fashions every time. It's my favorite way to support MicroWorks and my favorite whiskey to sip responsibly after a long day of interviewing people on this podcast. Pick up a bottle at noblespirates.com, K-N-O-B-E-L-Spirits.com.

Soon may the noble men come to bring a bottle for everyone. One day when the waitin is done, we'll take a drink and go. So there was a mining company that showed up in the Nome, West Gold. They drilled 4,000 holes offshore. They brought up a huge,

the bema it was a huge huge bucket line dredge so they brought up this bucket line dredge it was out offshore mining they were drilling holes and there was a guy named yano on the drill crew but he was the panner so every sample that come up he was the one and he got to see every pan you know maybe not every pan out of the 4,000 holes but on his shift Well, the price of gold dumped and went to $300 an ounce.

So they were like, we can't run this dredge off of $300 an ounce. It left. It's a dock somewhere. They scrapped it, tore it all down, tore it apart. Well, Yano, knowing where to go, because we all started back then, we were all with little six-inch dredges that we, We'd mount some four-wheeler tires too, and then we'd shove it off the beach and then tie it to the truck and go off the beach. Yano was kind of the pioneer of this as he went out and just crushed it.

I mean, we ended eventually going to 8-inch, and then we were 10-inch, and now we're going 12-inch and 14-inch. Explain that, Sean. What's the significance of inch over inch over inch? What are we really talking about? So, I mean, six inch, you could suck up a rock five and a half inches in diameter. You're basically a glorified rock picker on the bottom of the ocean. You're moving rocks. But there was so much gold back then.

You could run a six and still do $1,000 to $5,000 a day. So then as we progressed in the grout, so now the really hot spots are getting fewer and fewer because we've high-graded out. So now we're going to bigger and bigger hoses. So our production goes up. We'll run lower grade material, I mean, material with less gold in it and run higher volumes of it to produce the same amount. So. Right. So it's a volume game.

Like the more you can get off the. ground right when was just yano guy doing this was this in the 50s the 60s 70s it was was 80s I want to say so this didn't really this is a new thing yeah so they mine for a hundred years in land and no and I'm gonna build a dredge that'll mine for a hundred years offshore I'm gonna build one last dredge I'm gonna to build my magadredge. I'm out build it and then I'm going to train a bunch of guys how to run it.

Then I'm going to go sailing around the world. Good for you. So it was the Christine Rose first, then the Myrtle Irene? Yeah. Well, I mean, I started out diving on the Midas. That's what really got me hooked is that first year I went

diving in the ocean. It was I went from plumbing being a mechanical contract. tractor to and then certain circumstances. I was like, how I'm going to go. I helped build the bar such a dredge to the Midas with Norm Stiles. You know, he was kind of my mentor in the ocean. Built it and was like, I found a survival suit, you know,

and a regulator in a toolbox and didn't have anybody. Nobody wanted to go take the new dredge out. the 10 inch and go diving. So I took it out by myself. And I think I did 24 ounces by myself the first week. So there's nobody above you on the compressor in case anything goes wrong? No, it was just I took the boat. I couldn't find anybody.

Norm's like, oh, I got this guy. I got this guy. And here I'm in a survival suit. I found in one of the old fishing boats. And I looked like scuba Steve with the regulator I found in a tool. I found in a toolbox laying in the shop and had to put on because it was a, you know,

survival suits real thick. So I had like 80 pounds that led on my, wow. It was like, I'm going to go do it. But Norm's like, I got this guy. He's a diver, you know? And I was like, okay,

we get out there and he could get about right here in the water. And then he couldn't, you know, He couldn't make it. So it was like, all right, I guess I'm, so I finished the week by myself. I was like, because you're fired. How many businesses, though, start like that, where what we have is a difficult, maybe even a crappy job, and somebody raises their hand and says, yeah, I'll do it. I'll try that.

I mean, it takes people like Norm and myself and, you know, where we see opportunity and have that. okay well this ain't working this isn't working let's try this when did you become and how did you feel the first time you heard me refer to you in the show as mr gold i've had i guess i'm used to nicknames my brother my friend brian mcardle he uh living in minnesota they for some reason we had a apartment across from the high school and all the kids we'd go over there for lunch you know because it was right across from back in grade school and high school they started calling me Luca and it just

kind of followed me around followed me all away from Minnesota up to Noam you know even the old lunch lady cute little old Eskimo lunch ladies they still they're like hey Luca and I'm like I can't you know So now I got another one, Mr. Gold. It's okay. Why Luca? It was, yeah, I don't, that song. My name is. My name is Luca.

I live on the second floor, that one? Yeah, yes, yes. So we were, apartment had to be on the second floor. In Brooklyn Center, I think it was a school of about 2,500 kids. And now my brother, all of his friends, every time they see me, they're yelling. down the hallways. Lucca! And, you know, it was...

You're only one letter off from Lucra. Which I think is gold, right? Lucra. Money. Money. So Mr. Gold, what about the rest of the people in the show? This is a question for people who know Bering C. Gold, who know Emily Rydell, who know Zeke Tenhoff, who know Vernon Agkison, who know the gang.

What's it like hanging out with? with them when the cameras are all gone because this is you know it's still your home up there are you guys all friends all the people you mentioned we are friends oh i left the kelly's out didn't i yes oh god blood-sucking leachy how do you feel about him you want me to really tell you how i feel about them i don't know what sure Yeah, no, they're not really worth my time. Although there is going to be a little MMA. Yes, you know, I was talking to one of the producers.

He said, yeah, things actually got personal. Oh, yeah, we'll leave it at that. Well, you know what? There's the reality of the work. There's the reality of your life. And then there's the reality of reality, reality TV. and all sorts of things need to happen for a show to stay on its feet. And I'm sure a lot of viewers are curious.

I mean, I get the same questions all the time. What's real and what's not? What's authentic and what is it? I get in trouble sometimes for having those conversations, but I think it's all part of it. People really and truly want to know. What people have to understand, this is how we make our living. You got these idiots, the Kellys, that come and keep screwing.

with you and getting in the way and trying to jump in front of you and coming over here coming over there following you here they're with not only the livelihood of myself but my crew their families their kids and it just pisses me off that oh well we'll just keep following Sean wherever he goes and get in his way and cost him money and cost his crew money and and it's like and enough's enough and if you don't get out of the way, you're going to go around and find out. Yeah. Yeah, no, I get it.

I don't know how big a boy you are. Let's find out. How big a boy are you? Do you think anything would be happening differently in terms of like the interaction, not just with what you're talking about with these guys, but with, it's what I meant before. Like, what do the cameras do for you, if anything?

Do they make you like step back and take a deep breath? or does it even impact anything at all anymore? And then nowadays, I don't, I've learned a long time ago that, you know, if you worry about what everybody else is thinking, what everybody else is talking about, you'll never get anywhere. So I just really don't give a...

Ignore the cameras. The camera's not there. No, even with the cameras there, it's like, okay, I mean, I used to worry about it when the show for about the first one or two seasons, I suppose. And then after that, it was like, I'm going to be me. And I didn't get to where I'm at by being scared or concerned about what other people think or what other people are thinking.

You just go be you. Yeah, but here's what makes you interesting. You might be out of to give in that sense. But you did write by your high school teacher long term. You do write by your crew. And you sent me $500. worth of gold for my foundation. And I want to circle back and just ask you straight up, why does you do that? Why do you care about a work ethic scholarship program? I mean, that's, I feel like nowadays that we're kind of losing that. A work ethic, that's, you got to have a good work ethic. You have to, I mean, are you going to, you know, wait for the mechanic to show up to fix your dredge? or you're going to wait for somebody to come fix your house

or your heater at your house. You've got to be able to do everything yourself. Otherwise, you've got to count on other people. And I only guys I like to count out. Or the handful of guys that have been with me for the last 15, 20 years. How many people have you seen fail at this? And how many more have come up to Nome as a result of seeing this show?

I know on Deadliest Catch, people line up for a chance to be a greenhorn just to get the snot kicked out of them and probably lose money or maybe a finger. But has this attracted more people? Oh, definitely. After the show aired, it was a plethora of, well, you're an idiot. You're doing it this way. We're going to show you how. We're going to show you how to do this. And we're going to do it this way.

And I'm looking at it. I'm like, okay. Well, show me. And then four or five months later, you see them coming out of the back of the restaurant with the dish tall, drying dishes and washing dishes at the local restaurant. And it's like, you're showing me how now, aren't you, buddy? I mean, some of these guys come in with the biggest heads. And, you know, you're dumping your material in the middle of the barge and you're doing this and you're doing that. and you're, I'm going to show you how.

And it's like, well, you go ahead and show me. But like I said earlier, it's attention to detail that they don't see. Isn't it amazing, though? I mean, it's like every industry that I can think of almost has that. You know, people look at it from a distance and they assume all sorts of things. And then they show up to make a better mouse trap. But it's not. It's just like, has anyone succeeded who has seen this show who has come up and dug in that you know of?

Hmm. That's a tough one. There's very few hardcore miners left. I've seen a lot come and a lot go. I see some ridiculous. I mean, they're like, we got this roll of tinfoil. We're going to build a boat out of it. cardboard boxes and tinfoil, good luck.

Who's the greatest? I guess it's a stupid question, but I'm asking it really broadly as a guy who watches Gold Rush, and as a guy who's known a bunch of treasure hunters, and a guy who's, I've been in a lot of different kinds of minds, but just when it comes to prospecting, present company excluded, who wrote the book? Who's your hero in that world? it'd have to be yano he was the pioneer you know and he was like oh i've seen this gold in this pan and i'm going to go get it so it'd have to be yano by far for ocean and diving for gold in the baring sea

how much gold has come out of the sea since that day as far as you know if you had to guess i know the beeman did 150,000 ounces and since the bisoned. then I've never really thought about it. Millions and millions and millions and millions. Yeah, by 100,000 ounces, you know, 75,000 to 100,000 ounces. Didn't you tell me that you brought up 30,000 ounces yourself over the course of your life? That's your guess? Yeah, with inland and offshore, roughly about 30,000.

That's like a third of what you were saying. Yeah, yeah. He was asking offshore. So the inland, there was some big mines inland that produced quite a bit also. But like I said, it's easy to find it and make it. The hard part is pulling onto it and keeping it. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, oh, if I buy this, I could get more gold next year. If I buy that, I can get more gold next year. And you're always always looking for that next move to, to take you over the top. So where is the top for you? It sounds like you're going to do one more mega dredge. You're going to staff it. You're going to give it everything it needs.

And then you're going to sail to Tahiti with an all-girl crew. Yeah, you're out. I'm out. I mean, that's the end goal. I want to build something that will support Nome. Noam is my home. It's where I grew up. It's the people there are, I don't stay there because of the weather, obviously.

It's because of the people and the culture and the, it's just, where else do you go? It's sturdy below out. Let's go fire up the sleds and go out to camp and go for 60 miles, snow machine ride or snowmobile out to camp and go hang out for the weekend and go ice fishing. Can you talk more about that, just about how. a place like Gnome can shape you and change you. I think for a lot of people, you'll remember the show of Northern Exposure, right? For a lot of people that was their first look, granted, a scripted look, you know, a comedy,

but you still got the sense of this place off the grid. And then in nonfiction, you know, you get Deadliest Catch and now Bering Sea Gold and Alaskan Bush people. And there just seems to be part of why those shows work is that they take you to a place that maybe you didn't know existed. And there's something great, not just about the trip, but about the people who have always been there. And that's my last question, really. How does all that come together? And what is it about the people specifically in Nome that makes you give a damn? I mean, to live where we live, and it takes a certain type of personality or person, and the people in Nome are just, they're amazing.

They love a venture. They love getting out in the country, and there's so much country that it's, I've lived in the city, lived here, lived there, but there's no other place I'd rather be than, no. Is it fair to say there's no place like that? Noam? There's no place like Noam. I see what you did there. See, I figure if we talk long enough, I'll come up with the title for the episode and there

we finally have it. Yeah. Took me a while. There's no place like Noam. Congratulations on a very unusual life, a hit show that millions of people love, and for pulling off that neat but very rare trick of becoming somewhat famous and not changing one damn thing about yourself. That's hard to do. And you did it, my friend. And thank you again for your generous donation to MicroWorks those years ago. That made an impression on this end.

Awesome. I appreciate you, Mike. And thanks for having me. One of these days, I'm going to make it up there. And when I do, I'm not going to be joining you out on the ice to dive through that freaking hole. I just want to be clear about that now. I got a suit that'll fit you. He'll be sitting in the deckhouse sipping a martini instead. Season 11 or 12 or maybe it's 15. I don't know, Chuck. Do you have an air date for this thing? December 6th, 8 p.m. Discovery Channel.

Yeah, this episode drops December 6th. So today, if you're listening to it on December 6th. Good. Well, check it out. You'll see a guy that looks an awful lot like work. His name is Mr. Gold. And you'll hear me talking like this in a climate-controlled booth with something sensible to sip on,

as I tell the true stories of the Bering Sea. gold miners up there. Thanks, brother. Thank you. If you like what you heard, and even if you don't, won't you please, won't you please,

Pretty close cry? Well, I hate the base, pretty's, poise, so. The ocean moves us. Surfing a wave or savoring the view.

The ocean delights us as playful otters restore coastal kelp forests. The ocean connects us. Visit Monterey Aquarium.org slash connects. If you work in university maintenance, Granger considers you an MVP, because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off, and Granger is your trusted

partner. Offering the products you need all in one place, from HVAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more, and all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock, so your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-Grangeer, visit granger.com or just stop by, Granger. for the ones who get it done.