The premiere episode introduces viewers to four of Nome's gold seekers: The Christine Rose, a huge barge equipped with an excavator arm and run by experienced and successful father and son gold seekers; The Wild Ranger, a converted sailing catamaran beginning its first season run by a rookie captain with an explosive personality and greenhorn deckhands with authority issues; The Clark, operated by two young Alaska natives who have been friends since childhood, one of which has serious hospital bills to pay, and the other a greenhorn diver trying to get to opera school in Vienna; and The Sluicey, a small, barely-seaworthy vessel built and operated by a former social worker whose season is already off to a terrible start. The one thing they all have in common? The real –and sometimes desperate — need to find gold to support their very existence.