Alaskan Monster Hunt: Hillstranded Reviewed

From the files of the River Journal’s Surrealist Research Bureau

What a horrible, loathesome month for afficiandos of the cryptid world. I’m a sorta’ fan of the show “Deadliest Catch” and though I’ve only seen a couple of shows, I helped pay my way through college working on a lobster boat off the Santa Barbara Islands, a relatively small boat compared with the massive Time Bandit and Northwestern ships shown on the program and one fueled, on our part at least, by cheap wine and marijuana. As most of you know, two Captains of the Deadliest Catch recently premiered that show’s latest spin-off, “Hillstranded,” featuring the Hillstrand brothers on various adventures around the Pacific Northwest.

Even before the TV show’s premier had ended the chat rooms of various cryptozoological websites (for instance cryptomundo.com) lit up with expletives, scorn and an absolute sense of revulsion and sell-out! Some of the more printable comments included, “What a couple of Yahoos!” “Is it me or did the Hillstrands seem drunk throughout?” “Unbelievably horrible, garbage, total garbage!”

The Discovery Channel show had been widely anticipated due to its hype as having filmed clear, unmistakeable evidence of the existence of “Caddy,” a 40- to 60-foot long apparent sea snake often sighted off the British Columbia coast. The resulting 4-5 second excerpt shown revealed merely an amorphous blob with a brief glimpse of a possible head.