Emily Riedel is back at one of her two passions again–dredging for gold. Bering Sea Gold: Under the Ice airs on Friday evenings on the Discovery Channel. The show’s second season premiered last Friday. Riedel is a rugged young woman. When not digging for gold, however, she studies opera. While the show took a break from filming, Emily went to New York City to learn to become an opera singer. She even sang on The Jeff Probst Show a few months back.

These days Emily is earning the moniker of ‘dancing-with-death female dredger,’ as she dives deep into the water off Nome, Alaska–after cutting through as much as four feet of solid ice to reach the water. Emily does all this to dredge for gold, and she’s incredibly good at it, too.

“We were really limited by the elements, the winds 20 or 30 below. It was very difficult conditions to make money in,” Riedel said during a recent Fox News interview. “There were a lot of barriers we needed to overcome and we are all still learning. It was a chaotic and frustrating time drilling under the ice… we aren’t certified divers and we are trying to do something that is very difficult and dangerous.”

“There are certain goals I have for gold mining that I haven’t yet achieved, so I am going to keep on trying until I do,” she added. “The conditions might be awful, but everyone in the world wants to find gold. If you find it, it is yours. It is worth it.”

Besides opera and dredging for gold, is there anything else the 24-year-old would even consider doing for work?

“On a bad day I say I could stop this and become an accountant, but that’s not true. I would be a horrible accountant. We are incapable of having regular jobs. I have an uncomfortable personality in general,” she said. “Normal settings make me really anxious. I don’t feel normal in what should be normal situations.”

Emily Riedel makes her living under exceedingly dangerous conditions. Not many young women would even consider such a profession. It does raise the question about what makes someone like Emily take on such a dangerous endeavor. Could it be the fact that her dad, Steve Riedel does the same kind of work? Might it be that universal love (some call it greed) of money? Or is it a combination of a no-holes-barred ruggedness that makes a dangerous sense of adventure flow freely through her veins?

Do you know any other 24-year-old woman who would do this kind of work? Can you believe that Emily takes her life into her own hands in order to star on Bering Sea Gold: Under the Ice? Is any amount of money worth risking one’s life?

We lived! We finally got into Seattle at three AM. After we crossed the border, Dad @RiedelSteven decided to improvise directions! …yeah.

— Emily Riedel (@EmilyRiedel23) November 14, 2013

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