‘Deadliest Catch’ Captain “Wild” Bill Wichrowski Opens Up About His Battle With Cancer

“If I can help save one or two people on this planet, that’s a good thing,” says Captain “Wild” Bill Wichrowski on The Deadliest Catch Season 20 preview. Wichrowski is speaking about the decision to go public with his cancer diagnosis.

The Summer Bay skipper has prostate cancer, usually a very slow-growing condition, but not in his case. Footage from the show has Wichrowski visiting a doctor who tells him, “You do have prostate cancer, and it needs to be treated right away.”

“The next 4, 6, 8 months is not going to be pleasant,” says a resigned Wichrowski. In a Facebook post from February, the skipper said in response to a post from a fan, “My Cancer numbers are good . no energy from hormones but looks like on the back side of it for now.”

The news was teased at the end of Season 19, but his cancer battle looks to be front and center in Season 20, which debuts tonight.

“When I heard it,” Wichrowski says of the diagnosis, “one of the things I thought was, ‘You know what? I’m not going to stop [fishing]. I’m going to keep going until I actually can’t.’ How many people get diagnosed with this and they just shut down and crawl into a shell? And it just makes it worse.”

That pledge looks to be put to the test this coming season, as Wichrowski will continue running The Summer Bay. And he sees benefits to that even if he doesn’t catch a single crab.

“I’ll be honest. It’s kind of weird to put [the diagnosis] out there to the public. I’ll explain to people what happens as it goes…I’m willing to put it out there to let people see the journey in hopes of convincing some people to get tested.”