The fleet experiences some of the worst king crab weather ever in the last few days of the season. Against better judgment, the Time Bandit navigates the treacherous False Pass in the storm, and make it through safely. The Northwestern continues to pull blanks attempting to hunt blue king crab. Things are no better when Edgar is briefly at the helm. After constant single-digit counts, Captain Sig finally gives up. Captain Keith's brother, Monte, takes the helm as the Wizard tries to hunt bairdi crab. They find unprecedented numbers of keepers and meet their quota quickly, but their greenhorn Joel keeps lagging. The Cornelia Marie is on its last strings in the brunt of the storm, and the crew works its hardest to get its last 20,000 pounds of crab. Things get worse when their generator goes out, but a quick fix gets them back running, and they race to get their pots up. The Kodiak is desperate to finish their quota, but their bad luck continues, and Captain Bill has to make one last trip to meet their quota.

All quiet on the Cornelia Marie as the crew heads to the clinic 2 hours after Captain Phil's stroke. He's going to be medevaced to Anchorage with Jake, as Josh begins planning for the boat finishing its season without him. Josh later gets an update from Jake, who tells him that Phil will have a portion of skull removed to relieve the pressure. While seeking advice, Josh talks with Deckhand Freddy Maughtai, who urges Josh to fly down to Anchorage and be with Phil and Jake. Josh, however, feels that his father would want him to take care of the Cornelia Marie, his legacy, in his absence and that he owes his old man to do so. Freddy tells him that if Phil dies and he isn't there, he will regret it for the rest of this life. "Season every year... crab every year... Dad, no. There's only one Dad, bro. The crab is always catch. We always make money, every year. But we cannot catch a Dad every year." Freddy reveals how his own father died in the hospital in Australia while he was out during an opilio season with Phil; his aunt called to inform him, and he went home not seeing his father but a dead body. He leaves Josh with his thoughts, making his decisions much harder.

The Time Bandit begins pulling a new string as Captain Andy starts training Mike Fourtner as a relief captain. His first string of five pots doesn't bring up good numbers. On the Northwestern, Jake Anderson is torn between wanting to go search for his missing father, and his family desiring him to remain on his boat. The crew suffers a near-miss when a pot snaps free of the crane, and Jake is able to save the pot, but Sig admonishes him to let it go next time in case a hook is swinging free. Sig doesn't mind having to buy another pot in such a situation; his crew's safety is worth more than any pot. On the Kodiak, the crew finally sees good numbers as they approach their first opilio delivery date. But the crew is being dragged down by deckhand Clint, and Wild Bill has to put him in his place. Despite early counting issues, they hit their first delivery with crab to spare, and Wild Bill gives his crew some shore leave, only requesting that they don't have any hard liquor. He's worried Clint won't make the midnight curfew, but the entire crew misses it, and it's Jake that has the issues in the morning, not Clint.

After 12 hours of surgery, the neurosurgeon who worked on Phil Harris has a grim prognosis as he shows the results to Josh, Jake, and Johnathan Hillstrand. Although survivable, the location of the stroke makes a fatal complication possible, and he anticipates a very long road to recovery.

On the Northwestern, Jake Anderson continues to ponder his missing father as the rest of the crew deals with broken bodies. The crew takes a break to celebrate Jake's six months of sobriety from a situation pre-season. Their next delivery date is jeopardized as they hit a nursery and draw low numbers of keepers. Edgar Hansen feels the job is killing him, and is feeling the end of his career drawing closer with each grind. Sig overhears Edgar's personal concerns, and thinks if he's close to quitting, he should get serious about training a replacement. Sig thinks Edgar's problem is that he's the one everybody goes to on the deck. The Wizard grinds through ice on the north side of the crab grounds to get some ice-covered strings pulled. Frequent calls from his daughter try to keep Captain Keith in line regarding kicking his tobacco habit. The crew gets breakfast as Keith and Monte try to work through the ice. Keith sees a seal. They find clear ice, and their pots. They also manage good numbers, convincing them to gamble and keep fishing there. The Kodiak returns to the grounds and takes to its soaking pots. The numbers are outrageously good, and the crew is finally clicking. But when the numbers dry up, some pots show they weren't properly secured, allowing crab to escape. Wild Bill chews out his crew after the string, then calls in reinforcements, prepared to fire one of his crew if things don't shape up. On the Time Bandit, Captain Andy is losing focus with his brother keeping watch over Captain Phil. The crew pulls crab pots in −30°F weather, conditions cold enough to make the crab fall apart before they get in the tank. To make it worse, everyone is sniping on Mike Fourtner, since he's being groomed for the captain's chair.

The show begins with Captain Johnathan calling Captain Andy with positive news on Captain Phil's progress. Andy passes it throughout the fleet to their excitement.

After Jake and Josh Harris's confrontation in the previous episode, Josh goes to Captain Johnathan for advice. Johnathan tells Josh just to be there for Phil and deal with his business himself; he may feel that Jake is also his responsibility, but it really isn't. Back on the Time Bandit, Mike Fourtner's jitters with the hook continue, and Scotty Hillstrand is eager to prove himself in Mike's place. On the Northwestern, bad numbers continue to lengthen their grind, which only makes the crew miserable and long for home. In Anchorage, the neurologist tells Josh to begin making preparations to move Phil to a rehab facility in Seattle, though the actual move is still some time away as they wait for the rest of his swelling to go down. Bad numbers are plaguing the Kodiak, and deckhand Clint continues to be seen as a thorn in the crew's side. Wild Bill, tired of the crew as a whole, makes a call ahead to hire a new deckhand. The Time Bandit goes to a new prospect string, where Scotty proves no better at the hook than Mike. Captain Andy's gamble on a deeper string is an utter bust. Andy and Neal determine that making the crew hate the Captain is better than allowing the crew to turn on each other.

In Anchorage, Jake Harris broods over his demons, and calls a substance abuse clinic in Seattle to admit himself into rehab. He goes to Phil to tell him. Phil is proud of his son for finally getting the help he needs. Captain Johnathan and Josh take him to the airport to fly home to Seattle.

A storm brews in the Bering Sea, and the Northwestern hopes to finally catch some luck. Ready for a break, Edgar begins to train Jake Anderson on the hydros. After a good amount of luck, he finally slips a pot out of the dogs, and it slides into the crab table without toppling. In Dutch, the Kodiak offloads another 210,000 pounds of crab, and picks up a new deckhand, Randy. But he talks to the crew before Wild Bill actually fired somebody to make room. After finishing the offload, Wild Bill fires Clint to make room for Randy.

In Anchorage, Phil tells Josh he regrets not being there as much as he wanted to, but Josh shows no regrets for his upbringing as he says that Phil taught him everything that he needed to know to be a man. During their exchange, Josh breaks down and has to step out, not wanting his dad to see him cry. On another day, Phil asks Josh to go get his good-luck bracelet from his hotel room when he returns in the evening. As a furious arctic storm pounds the fishing grounds, Phil deteriorates rapidly, and Josh is summoned to the hospital. Despite doctors' best efforts, Phil succumbs to complications of his stroke.

As the storm rages through the crab grounds, hauling pots gets really complicated on the Northwestern. As numbers dwindle and weather worsens, the risk outweighs the reward and Captain Sig gives up, willing to take being up to 4,000 pounds short over losing some or all of his crew. In Saint Paul, where the Cornelia Marie is still preparing to get underway, Freddy Maugatai is in the wheelhouse when Josh Harris calls to pass along the news that Captain Phil had died. Breaking down, he heads into the engine room to inform the rest of the crew, and he and Steve Ward share a moment of tearful consolation. An eerie calm passes over the crab grounds, and the captains, who don't know of Phil's fate yet, express their concerns.

Most northern of the ships right now, the Kodiak works in frigid conditions in an attempt to fish the edge of the ice pack. Although Wild Bill doesn't regret getting rid of deckhand Clint, having two new deckhands doesn't help when the air temperature is −40 °F/C and visibility is 15 feet. Poor returns from the pots prompt a northward trek. Due to the freezing temperatures, the hydraulic system onboard develops a problem. Deck boss Adam shuts down the hydraulic system for repairs, inadvertently endangering the oblivious crew above when a pot suspended from the now-paralyzed deck crane swings uncontrollably before it can be tethered. The broken hydraulic line is replaced and fishing continues.

The Time Bandit needs to fill two of its three tanks in the next 48 hours. The crew seems to be working better, and the numbers improve as well, giving hope that they will make the next delivery. Jeremy hauls bait hard, and Captain Andy decides to teach him how to throw buoys. But his arms are so sore, he can't throw them very far, and one gets caught on the rail, potentially endangering the boat. To the west of Saint Paul, the Wizard sees good fishing along the ice pack. The problem is, Captain Keith sees the crew getting nonchalant about their jobs. He comes down from the wheelhouse to give them a pep talk, telling them to speed up the process so they can plug the tanks and get back in. Deckhand Lynn Guitard continues to lag behind and gets messy with tying up the stack, prompting an additional talking-to from Keith at the wheelhouse window.

The Northwestern gets into Saint Paul early, 10 hours before its delivery time. After some downtime with the crew, Captain Sig goes to the Cornelia Marie to introduce himself to relief captain Derrick Ray. It is here that he finds out that Captain Phil is gone; it was the same evening Derrick found out. The galley of the Northwestern is somber after Sig relays the news to his crew, who fights their emotions. The word spreads quickly from there through the crews. As the Northwestern leaves, they slowly pass the Cornelia Marie. Jake Anderson breaks down as they salute the boat. Andy comments that it's time to retire his American flag on the Time Bandit; the storm has ripped it into a barely recognizable tangle of fibers. He compares it to the season in general.

The boats make their final pushes of the painful 2010 opilio crab season. The Time Bandit replaces its torn-up U.S. flag. Their plan is to set gear one more time, pick up Captain Johnathan, then go pick their gear up. The Northwestern crew is finally beginning to break. The Cornelia Marie picks up Josh Harris, who is determined to finish the year, as Captain Phil would've wanted. On the Wizard, Captain Keith is concerned with plugging his tanks one more time to meet his quota. Wild Bill on the Kodiak is rushing through his gear, hoping to get one more set of strings pulled before the ice pack swallows them. He is gambling on only using the smaller orange diver pots on his final set of strings, to minimize the risk of the ice moving them.

Once Captain Johnathan returns to the Time Bandit, he and Captain Andy deliberate on how big Mike's ego grew when he got a taste of the captain's chair. One night on the Northwestern, Captain Sig is unable to sleep, with Captain Phil on his mind. Edgar is long since over this season, and continues to train Jake Anderson on more aspects of the deck. They get good enough numbers to pack the pots away. Sig finally realizes that he'll need to eventually find a replacement for Edgar. Back on the Time Bandit, Mike and Scotty continue their feud. Andy fuels it by putting Scotty back on the rail. He snags the first buoy, but Mike drops it. Their first pot doesn't look promising, and it also falls out of the dogs. Later pots have better numbers, giving hope that this set of strings will be their last of the season. Captain Johnathan joins the deck crew to help sorting, and they clean house with a final total of $1.2 million.

The Northwestern is officially on its final pots, finishing with a total of $990,000. To honor Captain Phil, they throw several flaming hooks for the final pot, which is totally stuffed with crab. As for the Kodiak, they have to cruise through the ice pack for the final set of 30 pots. He moves quickly through the gear hoping for good numbers. He gets the numbers he's looking for, and finally secures a good season. The gamble paid off, with a final opilio tally of $1.6 million. On the Wizard, they are back in the crab as well, ending up with crab oozing back on the deck. Captain Keith gives Lynn Guitard the final hook throw, rewarding him for cleaning up his act. He ends up shanking a long throw, but nails a retry without needing to turn around. The crew finishes with earnings of $1.8 million on a record haul.

Back on the Northwestern on its final steam to Dutch Harbor, Edgar notifies Sig that he needs a break so he can take care of his family. He makes it clear he's putting his wife and children ahead of the boat from now on. Sig still doesn't believe Edgar will give the boat up. As for Jake Anderson, he'll fly ahead to finally address his missing father. On the Time Bandit, Captain Andy tells Mike Fourtner to be mindful of his ego next season as he is given more time in the captain's chair. Jake Harris heads to an addiction clinic in Palm Springs, California.