Linda Greenlaw Casts Claim That Deadliest Catch Is More Scripted Than You Think
In Sig Hansen’s estimation, “Deadliest Catch” is not reality television. The veteran skipper regards “Deadliest Catch” as more of a documentary — or perhaps more accurately, a docuseries. Indeed, the long-running series does chronicle one of the most perilous industries, capturing unforgiving conditions and even death.
Still, “Deadliest Catch” is known to gin up drama. And according to the show’s newest cast member, Linda Greenlaw, “Deadliest Catch” is more scripted than you think. A well-known and highly regarded fisherman, Greenlaw is the sole female swordfishing captain on the East Coast, as well as a noted survivor of the “perfect storm” that plowed through the waters of the Northeast in 1991. In the cinematic retelling of that event, 2001’s “The Perfect Storm,” she was portrayed by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio.
Greenlaw is also no stranger to reality TV, having starred in Discovery’s “Swords: Life on the Line,” a series that focuses on the Northeast swordfishing industry. In an interview with Spectrum News, Greenlaw admitted, “[The] filming of ‘Deadliest Catch’ was more scripted than ‘Swords: Life on the Line.’”
Greenlaw doesn’t mind that it’s scripted — as long as she meets her quota
Like most reality TV programs, “Deadliest Catch” has long been held under scrutiny for dramatizing scenes, manipulating footage, and generally bending the definition of “reality.” Following the Season 4 premiere, The Hollywood Reporter called out the series for splicing together footage from two different days in order to make a storm seem more dangerous than it was. “Everything that you see in the show happened,” Discovery president John Ford said in response at the time. “Nothing is made up and nothing needs to be made up.”
Luckily, Linda Greenlaw doesn’t begrudge the series for adding some structure, even if a script helps to achieve that. “Hey, 19 seasons in, the show has to be more than catching crabs or not!” she said in the same interview with Spectrum News. “The popularity of the show speaks for itself.” Although she’s a veteran captain, Greenlaw is new to crabbing, and Season 19 sees her determined to meet her quota alongside the seasoned crabbers.
Scripted or not, “Deadliest Catch” is yet another item on Greenlaw’s resume, which includes running a charter business out of Surry, Maine; growing oysters; and penning bestselling cookbooks, memoirs, and crime novels. “Being featured in ‘Deadliest Catch’ will not change my schedule,” she continued. “But I imagine it will increase people’s awareness of me and my life. All good!” As for the series including some scripted sequences, that hasn’t disillusioned Greenlaw in the slightest. “None of this changes my perspective on fishing,” she said.
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.
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.
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.
