Deadliest Catch: The Cornelia Marie Has New Owners – But Will She Return?

The Cornelia Marie has switched hands, but it appears that the vessel isn’t likely to end up back on “The Deadliest Catch” any time soon. The boat recently resurfaced on Instagram with a fresh account, and information attached to the page declares that a number of fishermen now co-own the crabber. Among them are Roger Thomas, Kari Toivola, Jake Albinio and Taylor Jensen. Jensen confirmed his involvement with an Instagram post of his own. “First shipyard as partners in this big blue piece of steel,” read the caption on his photo.

While the ship’s new social media makes it clear that it will still be used for crabbing and fishing, what of its future on “The Deadliest Catch?” There’s no concrete word either way. If the owners decide to say yes to the show’s producers, that will take the Cornelia Marie up some very familiar watery straits. It will also force the ship and its new owners to directly reckon with its legacy of triumph and tragedy, which will almost certainly trail the majestic boat into its future.

The tale of the Harris family was harrowing

Any “Deadliest Catch” fan worth their salt knows that the Cornelia Marie once belonged to the Harris family, who became enmeshed in tragedy and legal complications before leaving the reality series behind. Phil Harris skippered the boat from Season 1 through Season 6, during which he was found dead, with Discovery Channel cameras filming all of the ups and downs that led to his passing from an intracranial hemorrhage in 2010.

Duties on the Cornelia Marie were subsequently taken over by Derrick Ray, while Harris’ son Josh was given his own spin-off series, “Deadliest Catch: Bloodline.” Discovery subsequently severed ties with Harris in 2022 after it was reported that he sexually assaulted a four-year-old girl in 1998, when he was 16. He was arrested for the crime in 1999, spent nine months in prison and underwent a psychosexual exam. His brother Jake, meanwhile, coped with addiction issues that led him to appear on “Bloodline” and “Deadliest Catch” only on an intermittent basis.

Both Harris brothers and the Cornelia Marie disappeared from the show’s line-up of vessels during Season 13 of “Deadliest Catch” and the second season of “Bloodline,” and have not returned to the programs since. Time will tell if the Cornelia Marie still has a whale of a tale to tell the world — or if its adventures will be quiet ones from here on out.

Contains spoilers for “Deadliest Catch” Season 20, Episode 5 — “Twice Bitten, Twice Shy”

“Twice Bitten, Twice Shy” indulges in some cross-captain shenanigans. Jake Anderson is finally helming his own ship again, but “Deadliest Catch” veteran Sig Hansen thinks he’s swiped the coordinates to some fertile crabbing waters via his old charts. While they’re very old coordinates — it’s mentioned the maps are from the mid-2000s — Sig decides to get a little revenge on Jake. He does this by stealing the Titan Explorer’s crabbing pots and moving them 50 miles out of the way.

Jake soon finds out about Sig’s revenge and unleashes a stream of invectives on the ship-to-ship radio. But when Jake eventually retrieves his pots, he finds that the place where Sig scuttled them off to was quite rich. He pulls up pots loaded with crabs, and the two captains begrudgingly make up. There’s just one problem: the story has made fans suspicious that the whole thing is staged.

“I thought Sig said he had very little time to catch his remaining quota but somehow has the time to move Jake’s pots 50 miles,” remarked u/kevrunner1962 on the “Deadliest Catch” subreddit. “I think obviously they were working as a pair and Sig took the gear (with Jake knowing) and moved it. I think [the] drama was not plausible, fake and badly scripted,” said u/R34ct0rX99. Other viewers were much more blunt in their assessment. “Sig/Jake fake crap is getting really old,” said u/Low-Pumpkin6312. And that isn’t the only part of the episode’s story that fans found iffy.

Audiences also have their doubts about this season’s crab derby

Plenty of “Deadliest Catch” fans thought the crabbing deadline mentioned in the episode had been falsified for the show. One poster to the series’ subreddit noted that it wasn’t just the shell game with the crab pots that turned out to be such a big issue. As huge fans of “Deadliest Catch” know, Sig Hansen is a no-nonsense person and he’s never been quite this impractical. “Oh yea Discovery, I totally believe that Sig would take time out of the so-called ‘Derby’ (which is a complete fabrication in and of itself this season given that its still the exact same quota system thats been used for decades now and is in no way even close to being a derby) to spend multiple hours f***ing with Jake,” said u/SixRavenX. They added that they found the old map situation ludicrous and also mocked the soap opera setup.

u/pointy_panda wrote that they’re so done with the show’s staged antics as related to Sig and the Northwestern. Another user, u/Professional_Menu408, had an even more pertinent point: “Red crab season this year only lasted 5 days…….”

All of this aggravation might be enough to make even the most loyal longtime fans stop watching “Deadliest Catch,” but for some viewers, too much is never enough. Will Sig and Jake ever really make up? Will they hit their seasonal quotas? Or can we expect a whole lot more discord to come? The only way to find out is to tune into “Deadliest Catch” every Tuesday on Discovery.