SITKA, ALASKA
Try for a second to make a short list of the reality TV shows set in Alaska. You're going to come up with shows about gold, state troopers, crabbing, ice road trucking, bush pilots, logging… it's a long list. And Brett Veerhusen, one of the subjects of a new reality show to be set in Alaska, says he’s well aware of that.
“You can say that the market is saturated with Alaska TV shows, but the footage that they’ve received in the last nine days will blow everybody out of the water,” he said.
Veerhusen, 25, and Sierra Anderson, also 25, are the subjects of a reality TV show on commercial fishing in Alaska, which includes the Sitka’s sac roe herring fishery. Crews were here during the openings to film the pair as they crewed aboard the Memry Anne, a Chignik-registered seine boat.
Because of the contracts they’ve signed for the show, they can’t talk about the name of the show or who’s producing it or when it will air because “we would get sued,” Veerhusen says, but they’ve tweeted about it on Twitter, so we know there IS a show, and of course they’ve been seen around town with a big video crew and a microphone, which they’ve named Sparky.
“We’ve been in Murray Pacific, and we’ve been in the P-Bar, different cafes around town, and we can’t really discuss any other details,” Veerhusen said.
But they can tell me their story. Veerhusen and Anderson were childhood friends in Chignik. The boat we’re on now – the Memry Anne – was once the “Shady Lady.” Veerhusen spent summers aboard this boat when his family owned it, and now the boat is owned by Anderson’s family.
“I ended up going herring fishing for the first time last season, and then it just was a chain of events from bad to worse, it seemed like,” Anderson said.
Last year during the herring fishery, it was pictured on the front page of the Sitka Sentinel last year tipped over on its side, leaning against a tender boat. It was repaired in Seattle and renamed the Memry Anne.
“And that’s where I ran into Brett for the first time since we were 15, basically,” Anderson said.
Veerhusen has a similar background – got his degree in business, and got a job working for a hedge fund in Seattle.
“Everything was glass, and I had flat-screen monitors, and I sat on a $700 chair, and you had an unlimited supply of snacks and refreshments in the breakroom,” Veerhusen said. “And I was so bored out of my mind I couldn’t even begin to explain. Not only that, but I probably entered at the worst possible time.”
He began his hedge fund job in July of 2008. In September, Lehman Brothers collapsed, taking a good chunk of the economy with it. So now Veerhusen runs a salmon boat in Bristol Bay.
Anderson continues to crew aboard fishing boats, including the Memry Anne, where she pilots the seine skiff.
“It’s kind of in our blood,” Anderson says. “This is what we know. This is what we grew up with, and for me it’s an epic adventure. It’s exciting. It’s an adrenaline rush. It’s the biggest challenge I’ve ever had in a skiff.”
And now they’re using their careers as fuel for a blog about life in Alaska and in commercial fishing. You can follow their further adventures online at therealalaska.com.
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