The camera focuses on the captain, steering his boat through the unpredictable Bering Sea as his crew empties pots teeming with crab. The narrator’s voice intones: “The Alaskan king crab season continues and there are pots that need to be pulled, no matter who sits in the wheelhouse.”

“Oh, so now it doesn’t matter who sits in the wheelhouse?” jokes the captain, now safely at home in Warrenton, rolling avocado and king crab – no imitation crab here – into California rolls.

It’s Tuesday night, and family and friends of Capt. Rick Quashnick and his wife, Donna, have gathered at their house to watch as the Discovery Channel’s “Deadliest Catch” follows their season aboard the Maverick.

“It’s awesome, it’s fantastic, I never get tired of watching him,” said Jean Quashnick, Rick’s mother. “I just worry about him.”

“Deadliest Catch,” now in it’s second season and a hit for the cable channel, follows fishing boats and their crews through the king and opilio crab seasons, through raging storms, catches good and bad, and the excitements and risks faced by the crabbers.

“They could make a lot of money, but they could also die,” said Jeff Conroy, the show’s producer with Original Productions. “They’re the characters that live on the edge; a lot of guys do this and love the hunt. It’s a thrill in their life, and they need it. It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure.”

While Rick Quashnick is the captain, Donna Quashnick, the boat’s co-owner, cook and “mom,” has been on the Maverick every winter for 14 years. She’s one of the few women who go out for the season.

The fact that they’re a husband-and-wife team drew producers of the show to the Maverick, Rick Quashnick said. Although he initially said no to the idea of camera crews onboard, having his boat featured on the show for the last two years has been fun, he said.

“Oh, I love it. It’s been a fun ride,” agreed Donna Quashnick. Although having a cameraman and a producer on the boat was different at first, she got used to it.

“You’re so involved with what’s happening with the fishery, and on the boat, you forget that they’re there till you bump into them.”

And because the cameras capture about 300 minutes of life onboard the boat for every one minute that ends up on screen, the Quashnicks don’t know what viewers will see next.

“We have no idea what they’re going to show,” Rick Quashnick said. “It’s always kind of a surprise.”

But still, his wife said, the show is a way for people across the country, most of whom have no connection to the fishing industry, to get a sense of the difficulties of the job.

“When they get a plate of king crab in a restaurant, they don’t realize what the fishermen have gone through to get that on their plate,” she said. “They begin to understand … and hopefully buy more, and keep us in business,” she adds with a laugh.

And it’s also a way for family and friends to see what they do when they head north for the crab season.

“I tell them what we do, but I don’t go into detail, and now they can see it,” Donna Quashnick said.

But last Tuesday night, the two dozen or so people at the Quashnicks’ were more often chatting, cooking and eating in the kitchen than actually watching the show. When the first episode of the first season aired, their family wanted to share that experience, the Quashnicks said. Now everyone just comes over every Tuesday.

“We love it – the good friends and family,” Rick Quashnick said. “Everyone just congregates here.”

Including the Maverick’s engineer Blake Painter, a second-generation fisherman from Astoria. Much of the Maverick’s storyline last week revolved around Painter’s hopes to take over as captain from Quashnick for the king crab season, which didn’t happen as planned.

“I’d been dreading this episode,” Painter said. “They made it look like the crew was against me,” but it was just one guy, he added. Donna Quashnick pops over to add that Painter will be in the wheelhouse for king crab next year, and has captained the boat for other seasons as well.

In a fishing town, everyone’s watching the show, Painter said, and his friends love nothing more than to tease him, calling him “Hollywood.”

But, he said, “I’m still me, there’s no difference. They just put my job on TV.” He’s keeping busy at his job as well; he left early Tuesday because he had to catch a plane the next morning to Alaska to take part in herring tendering on the Maverick in Togiak.

“Working for Rick’s the best, next to my dad. Those two have raised me to the fisherman I am now,” Painter said.

With Rick Quashnick still at the wheelhouse on the show, however, “Deadliest Catch” continues following the Maverick and other crab boats through the king crab season and the opilio crab season, which Quashnick said featured some incredibly rough weather.

Now, though, he’s busy in his airy kitchen talking with friends, siblings, daughters and other relatives, most of whom have some connection to the fishing industry, catching a glimpse of himself on television every once in a while.

The show reruns in a few hours, though: “Maybe I’ll get to watch some then,” he said.