Surprised by the new journey of Captain Deadliest Catch Who continues to take risks and who chooses a peaceful life?”
Surprised by the new journey of Captain Deadliest Catch Who continues to take risks and who chooses a peaceful life?”
Being an Alaskan crab fisherman is one of the most dangerous, high-stakes jobs in the world. Being a reality TV star, while certainly not as physically demanding, has its own share of pressures. Since 2005, the hit Discovery series “Deadliest Catch” has combined these two worlds, turning fishing vessels like the Cornelia Marie and the Wizard into stages where grand dramas play out, and making unlikely celebrities out of the brine-soaked men who work their bodies to death for an ever-depleting resource. Colorful captains like Phil Harris, Sig Hansen, and Bill Wichrowski trawl the Bering Sea twice a year during king crab season and snow crab season, while the first mates, deckhands, and greenhorns under them have their own stories, ambitions, and conflicts.
Another similarity between crab fishing and reality TV stardom is that it is not for everyone. Turnover is frequent between seasons, and those fishermen who stay on one year after another are often plagued with physical and mental health issues. Drug and alcohol addiction is famously rampant in the industry, and a good many cast members have faced legal woes over the years as a result. Fishermen who have left the show have done so for many reasons. Some have left the industry entirely, some were let go by the show’s production company, and others have had their reality TV fame replaced by infamy and jail time. Let’s take a look at what some of the most notable former cast members of “Deadliest Catch” are up to now.
Scott Campbell Jr.
Scott Campbell Jr. joined the show in Season 7 as captain of the F/V Seabrooke. The son of a fishing family, “Junior” was determined to make his mark both on the sea and on the series, and his enthusiasm for the work was a breath of fresh air. Sadly, health issues derailed his plans, as chronic back pain made both the physical aspects of the job like fighting for your life on the open seas and the more sedentary ones like sitting for long hours in the cramped wheelhouse all but impossible. Campbell left the show after Season 10 but returned several years later for Seasons 16 and 17, first on the Seabrooke and then aboard a new vessel, the F/V Lady Alaska.
During his time ashore, Campbell went into business for himself, serving as owner and CEO of Cordova Coolers (now Cordova Outdoors), an Idaho-based company that manufactures high-end coolers, drinkware, and accessories. He stepped down from that position in 2018, and in 2023 he began a new venture, Beaver Creek Firewood (motto: “Everyone likes a little wood every now and then”).
Mike Fourtner
The fishing life requires a lot of a person: tremendous and constant physical exertion, a willingness (even excitement) to look death in the face on a daily basis, and a brine stench that probably never really goes away. More than anything, though, the fishing life requires time. The men and women of “Deadliest Catch” spend nearly their entire lives on the seas, with just a few weeks separating the king crab and snow crab seasons each year. That kind of commitment makes it extremely difficult to have any other priorities in your life. Longtime F/V Time Bandit deckhand Mike Fourtner discovered this problem in 2013 when his wife, Laci, became pregnant. Realizing that he couldn’t be a father and a fisherman at the same time, he departed the Time Bandit toward the end of Season 9 in 2013. Fourtner continued to appear on the series pre- and post-episode specials “The Bait” and “After the Catch” for several years afterward. He even had his own interview segment on “The Bait,” appropriately titled “The Fourtner Report.”
Fourtner and his family settled in Washington state, where he worked for years as a West Coast sales rep for Cummins, Inc., a company that manufactures marine engines. In recent years he has transitioned into general contracting work, still in Washington, and even built the house he and his family live in himself.
Dean Gribble Jr.
Deckhand Dean Gribble Jr.’s time on “Deadliest Catch” was short-lived; he appeared on just a handful of episodes in Season 13 aboard the F/V Saga. But just because he left the show doesn’t mean he left the life. Gribble is still a career fisherman and documents his exploits extensively via social media under the handle “kingcrabba.”
In late 2019 Gribble made headlines as one of just two survivors of a shipwreck. On December 31 the F/V Scandies Rose was en route to the Bering Sea for the start of the new crabbing season when it suddenly took on ice on its starboard side and capsized. Gribble and fellow crewman John Lawler managed to get on a lifeboat and were airlifted to safety by the Coast Guard. The two suffered hypothermia but were otherwise unharmed; sadly, the bodies of the other five members of the Scandies Rose crew, including its captain and his son, were never recovered. In February 2023, Gribble posted a TikTok video that used audio from the voicemail left by the Coast Guard to his father, informing Gribble Sr. of the accident and that Dean was rescued.
Edgar Hansen
Edgar Hansen was a fixture on “Deadliest Catch” from the very first episode, serving as a deckhand and later deck boss and engineer on the F/V Northwestern under his brother, Captain Sig Hansen. In Season 9 he even took over for his brother as relief captain, working closely with his niece (Sig’s daughter) Mandy to marshal the crew of the Northwestern for another grueling turn at sea. Hansen was a fan favorite, and along with his brother and the Harris family (more on them later), was one of the show’s breakout stars. He did the late-night talk show circuit in the early years and appeared on other reality shows like “This Old House” and “Ca$h Cab.” Then, after Season 14 in 2018, he disappeared from the show and has not been listed as a cast member since.
2018, not coincidentally, is also the year Hansen pled guilty to sexual assault of a teenage girl in Florida. He was given a fine and a suspended sentence but did not serve jail time. Since then Hansen has not appeared on camera in any subsequent episodes of “Deadliest Catch” or its spin-offs and has kept a low, almost nonexistent public profile. Attentive viewers, though, claim to have spotted him in the background in later seasons, and he is clearly seen in a video posted to Mandy’s Instagram in October 2018, several months after his conviction. He may not be a “Deadliest Catch” cast member anymore, but it appears that he is still working in some capacity on the Northwestern.
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN’s National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
Jake Harris
Captain Phil Harris of the F/V Cornelia Marie appears just once in the first season of “Deadliest Catch,” but before long the ship and the entire Harris family would become central to the series. Phil’s son Jake Harris came on as a greenhorn in Season 2 and worked his way to deckhand in the seasons to come. The younger Harris’ world was rocked, however, by the death of Phil in 2010 after the conclusion of the show’s sixth season. Harris and his brother Josh carried on in their father’s memory, but issues with drug and alcohol abuse conflicted with his duties on the ship and on the show. He departed both in 2012, after Season 8.
Legal troubles followed in the years to come. Harris was arrested for DUI in 2019 and sentenced to 18 months in prison; a subsequent DUI arrest occurred in 2021. In 2021 and 2022 he appeared in a few episodes of his brother’s spin-off series “Deadliest Catch: Bloodline” and seemed to have gotten his life back on track with his wife, Shawna Brinkly, and their daughter. However, tragedy struck once again with the sudden death of Brinkly in August 2023.
If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
Josh Harris
Jake Harris’ brother Josh joined the crew of the Cornelia Marie as a greenhorn at the start of Season 3 in 2007. The Harris brothers were fan favorites, and when their father Phil died in 2010 Josh stepped up as the new captain of the Cornelia Marie. For years Harris was a dependable presence on the show, guiding his crew through uncertain waters both literally and figuratively, as the coronavirus pandemic turned the world upside down. In 2020 Harris starred in his own spin-off series, “Deadliest Catch: Bloodline,” which featured him sailing the Hawaiian islands with the aid of his father’s old maps.
Then, in 2022, Harris and the Cornelia Marie were dropped from the upcoming season due to a shocking incident in Harris’ past. In 1998 he was accused of sexually assaulting his neighbor’s daughter. Harris was a teenager at the time; the victim was four years old. He pled guilty and the charges were reduced to one count of Fourth Degree Assault and one count of Communicating to a Minor for Immoral Purposes. Harris was sentenced to 30 days’ confinement for each count, along with 24 months of supervision. When the conviction came to light, Discovery Channel issued a statement that Harris would not be involved in future episodes of the series (and presumably, his spinoff). Harris has kept a low public profile in the year since the incident came to light, though his Instagram account still boasts over 130,000 followers.
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN’s National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
Jason ‘Tennessee’ King
How many episodes does it take to be known as a “former ‘Deadliest Catch’ cast member” forever? When you’re a convicted felon, the answer is apparently just one. The Season 11 episode “We Have Not Yet Begun to Fight” features the Sage, Time Bandit, and Cornelia Marie in crisis mode as polar ice descends on them. One of the deckhands featured on the Cornelia Marie is a man named Jason King, here nicknamed “Tennessee” after his home state. It is unclear for how long he actually served as a deckhand, but “We Have Not Yet Begun to Fight” is the only episode of the series he is featured in.
Two years after that episode ran in 2015, King was arrested at his home in Counce, Tennessee, a small town near the Mississippi border. ATF agents uncovered 14 pounds of marijuana hidden under his house and a pistol stashed in a kitchen drawer. King had an extensive criminal record prior to the 2017 raid, and a year and a half later a federal judge gave him a maximum sentence of 51 months in prison, plus three years of supervised release. Nearly every news story on the arrest and conviction made mention of his association with the show, proving that even though his screen time was mere seconds on one episode of television a few years ago, he will always be Jason “Tennessee” King from “Deadliest Catch.”
Zack Larson
Crab fishing is very much a family business on “Deadliest Catch,” from Phil Harris and his sons and niece, to brothers Johnathan and Andy Hillstrand of the Time Bandit, to Sig and Edgar Hansen. One of the series’ most fraught relationships is between the colorful Captain “Wild Bill” Wichrowski and his son Zack Larson. Larson made his series debut in Season 6 as a greenhorn on his father’s boat at the time, the F/V Kodiak. Over the next few seasons he was promoted to deckhand and engineer aboard the Kodiak, followed his father to another boat, the Cape Caution, and closed out his time on the show with three seasons aboard the Brenna A, captained by Sean Dwyer.
Despite working in such close quarters — or perhaps because of it — Larson and Wichrowski rarely got along. Wild Bill, true to his name, is a larger-than-life character, and Larson often struggled to get out from under his shadow. In 2019, Larson swapped out crab fishing for cod fishing and took over captain duties for Dwyer’s other fishing vessel, the F/V Elinore J, where he has remained ever since.
Travis Lofland
Travis Lofland kicked around several boats during his seasons on the show: the Wizard, the Time Bandit, the Summer Bay, and the Cornelia Marie, where he worked not only as a deckhand but as the boat’s cook as well. For a brief moment in the early 2010s, Lofland was able to parlay his culinary bent into a solid side hustle as the series’ resident gourmand. In 2012 he co-wrote an officially licensed “Deadliest Catch” cookbook alongside his brother Jason, a professional chef. And in 2015 he appeared on a reality TV-themed episode of the cooking competition “Chopped,” alongside stars of “Mob Wives,” “Little People, Big World,” and “The Real Housewives of New Jersey.”
Lofland famously fell overboard in Season 8 while working on the Time Bandit, which reasonably prompted some soul-searching and thoughts about other things he could be doing with his life. But the call of the sea (and perhaps the cameras) was too strong, and Lofland turned up on the Cornelia Marie two years later; his last appearance to date was as a deckhand on the Summer Bay in 2019. Since then he has been out of the public eye but maintains an active — if controversial — presence on social media, filling his X (formerly Twitter) feed with right-wing jokes and memes about the coronavirus, the 2020 election, and baseless conspiracy theories.
Nick Mavar
Physical danger is a key part of the allure of crab fishing, for both the fishermen and viewers of “Deadliest Catch.” Accidents and injuries can and do occur, and when a fishing vessel is deep into the ocean, medical assistance is often hours away. But while the show will regularly highlight the inherent danger of the job, it rarely delves into what safety protocols, if any, are in place aboard these boats to protect the fishermen working on them. In 2020, longtime F/V Northwestern deckhand Nick Mavar suffered a ruptured appendix and had to be airlifted to a local hospital. The events aboard the Northwestern were captured by “Deadliest Catch” cameras and included in a 2021 episode.
The injury left Mavar incapacitated and unable to work; he also underwent cancer treatments when doctors found a tumor inside the ruptured appendix. In December 2022, Mavar filed a lawsuit against Hansen Enterprises, Captain Sig Hansen’s company and the legal owners of the Northwestern, for inadequate medical care aboard the ship, seeking damages of $1 million. Hansen Enterprises, in turn, is suing the show’s production company, Original Productions, and the contractors responsible for medical care aboard the boat, Trifecta Solutions, claiming that any damages awarded to Mavar should be their responsibility, not Hansen’s. As of August 2023, both lawsuits are still pending.
Casey McManus
When Phil Harris died in 2010, sons Josh and Jake stepped up to keep the F/V Cornelia Marie afloat and its crew employed. It was a tough job — and in Jake’s case, ultimately too much to handle while in grief — but the brothers had help. In 2014 fisherman Casey McManus joined on as co-captain of the boat, helping Josh keep the business afloat, so to speak. But when the sexual assault allegations against Josh Harris came to light in 2022, Discovery Channel declined to renew the contracts of either Harris or the Cornelia Marie for the upcoming season. McManus was out of a job, at least on television. Responding to a tweet in December 2022, he wrote, “It was a bummer deal, but no crab to catch anyways. All the seasons are shutdown. Smoke and mirrors.” The series acknowledged the toll taken on the crab industry by the pandemic in recent years, but McManus’ tweet implies that things are even more dire than Discovery is willing to admit.
The Cornelia Marie might have been taken out of commission, but McManus was back on the water soon after, working a tugboat operation for Paradigm Marine and Technical Services, an India-based company that provides nautical service and logistics for the oil and gas industry. As he wrote in an October 2022 Instagram post, “Different boat, still afloat….”
Elliot Neese
Combative captain and self-described series “villain” Elliot Neese debuted on the show in Season 7, running the F/V Ramblin’ Rose and later the Saga. On screen he was a tough customer — argumentative and conflict-driven — although in a 2016 Newswire interview he admitted that much of the drama around him was ginned up for the cameras. What was unfortunately all too real, however, was Neese’s addiction to narcotics; he left the series midway through Season 11 to enter a rehab facility. To date, he has not returned to the series.
While Neese was seeking help for his addiction, his legal troubles were just beginning. In 2019 investigators raided his Alaska home and found drugs and paraphernalia for dealing, along with $80,000 in cash. Neese admitted to not only dealing heroin but also to being a part of a widespread distribution network that provided opiates and amphetamines across the Alaskan Kenai Peninsula. As part of his plea bargain, he pled guilty to one count of possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute. In 2022, after failing a drug screening as a condition of his probation, Neese was sentenced to 30 months in prison.
If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
Joshua Tel Warner
It takes a lot of gumption to crew a crab boat, and it takes even more gumption to crew a crab boat that will be featured on national television on a weekly basis. And it takes even more gumption to do all that while also being wanted for a string of armed robberies on the mainland. Such is the tale of Joshua Tel Warner, who spent about half of Season 5 as a greenhorn aboard the F/V Wizard. Little did his fellow crewmen know, however, that Warner had robbed an Oregon bank in 2007 — that is, until he apparently bragged to them about it. In April 2009, while his episodes of “Deadliest Catch” were airing, he robbed another Oregon bank and then hit that same bank again about three weeks later.
Warner was finally caught in December 2009 after being pulled over for a routine traffic stop across the country in Illinois, and he received a nine-year prison sentence. Warner has no social media pages, and his whereabouts, as well as whether still in prison or not, are unknown. One place we know he is not, though, is on “Deadliest Catch.”
