The Wizard's first woman tells PEOPLE the biggest challenge "was just trying to prove myself"

Capt. Keith Colburn and the guys on the Wizard are getting a new crew member – and she’s breaking barriers.

Amy Majors is joining Deadliest Catch this season as the first woman on the ship’s crew. While Majors, 28, is the sole female on board, she’s no stranger to the seafaring lifestyle – as a third-generation fisher, she boarded her first vessel when she was only 10 hours old.

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“[Fishing’s] in my blood,” she tells PEOPLE.

Majors previously attended college to pursue photojournalism but quit after a year because she wanted “to pursue my dreams and what makes me happy, which is fishing.”

The idea to join the Wizard crew first came about at a marine expo last year when Capt. Colburn approached Majors, who also writes for Pacific Fishing Magazine.

She recalls, “Keith just randomly walked up, and he said, ‘I read all your articles in the magazine, and let’s see how tough you really are on the Bering Sea in the dead of winter.’ ” Without any hesitation she responded, “Sure, bring it on.”

Majors had previously fished for halibut, black cod and salmon, but she was nervous about joining the Wizard‘s crew since she had never gone crab fishing before.

“It was intimidating watching the show and seeing, you know, the weather that everyone had to deal with and the whole video camera thing that was also equally intimidating,” she says.

Majors admits she’s used to people being skeptical about – or even refusing to believe at all – her chosen profession: “People generally think that, you know, I’m not a commercial fisherman, so that’s why I usually tell them that I’m a nurse or a banker or something, because nobody believes me.”

Once she got on board, she admits, “[It was] very intimidating being the only woman on the ship … just trying to prove myself to everyone that I could do it and that women could do that on the Bering Sea.”

Majors admits that she’s not tougher than her fellow male crew members but says, “I definitely thought that I could keep up with them, and I did.”