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A New Breed: Celebrity Crabber

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 9, 2008

Being a Bering Sea crab fisherman isn't the anonymous, faceless job it used to be for Keith Colburn. When your face appears on TV dozens of hours each week on the Discovery Channel's reality series "Deadliest Catch," fame becomes part of the gig.

Colburn, the captain of the crab boat Wizard, visited Sarasota last week with his brother Monte as a guest attending the Suncoast Offshore Grand Prix Festival. While he was in the area, he thew out a ceremonial pitch at a Tampa Bay Rays game and did a demonstration on king, tanner and snow crab for a room full of Grand Prix VIPs. The week before, he was on Capitol Hill testifying before a congressional committee about the dangers of proposed oil drilling in Bristol Bay. (He's against the idea. "There aren't enough oil reserves to justify drilling - and destroying - the crab grounds," he says.)

Still, the former restaurant cook - he got his start in restaurants at age 14 - said the Sarasota lunch had him rattled. "I'm as nervous about the demo as I was about testifying in front of Congress."

Jeff Houck

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