‘Deadliest Catch’ Cast Member Arrested in Florida
A man who appeared on Discovery Channel’s popular fishing reality series Deadliest Catch has been arrested in Florida.
Erik James Brown of ‘Deadliest Catch’ arrested
Erik James Brown was arrested March 9 on Stock Island in the Florida Keys, Local 10 News reported. He is facing two counts of probation violation, according to arrest records from the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. An arraignment is scheduled for April 1.
This is not the first time the 40-year-old Brown has been in trouble with the law. In 2020, he was arrested twice for domestic battery against his 20-year-old girlfriend, the Key West Citizen reported. In 2018, he was charged after police discovered him growing 25 marijuana plants on a houseboat, per the News-Press. Brown has an extensive arrest record going back to 2003, according to the newspaper, including charges for drug possession, DUI, weapons possession, carjacking, and various traffic offenses.
Brown was part of the crew on the F/V Summer Bay
Brown first appeared on Deadliest Catch in 2019, according to IMDb. He was most recently seen in season 19, when he worked as a was a deckhand on Captain “Wild” Bill Wichrowski’s F/V Summer Bay. In that season, which aired in 2023, he broke his hand while at a bar. The incident nearly took him out of commission as a crabber, but he returned to work despite the injury.
In December 2023, Brown shared a video on Instagram of himself and other crew members “loading up the Summer Bay.” In other social media posts, he hinted that he would appear in future episodes of Deadliest Catch.
“Crabbing with Captain Wild Bill again this year…..season 20 Deadliest Catch,” he wrote in an October 2023 Instagram update.
Discovery Channel has yet to make an announcement about the status of Deadliest Catch Season 20.
A number of other ‘Deadliest Catch’ cast members have been arrested
Brown is far from the only Deadliest Catch cast member who has wound up in handcuffs. Over the years, a number of people who have appeared on the show have been arrested.
In 2017, longtime Deadliest Catch captain Sig Hansen was arrested after he spit on an Uber driver. Jacob Harris, who left the show in 2012, was sentenced to 18 months in prison on drug and DUI charges in 2019. Former cast member Jerod Sechrist was arrested in 2019 after he allegedly shoplifted over $1,000 worth of items from an Ikea in Florida, People reported. He’d previously been arrested for possessing heroin. In 2009, Joshua Tel Warner was arrested after committing a series of bank robberies. His appearances on Deadliest Catch helped lead to his arrest.
Wichrowski has spoken about the challenge of finding reliable crew members to work on crab boats.
“It’s harder to find excellent guys,” he told PopCulture in 2019. “They used to be lined up 12 deep when we were making the crazy rock star money, but now it’s almost easier to mold the ones you have and obviously, there’s, throughout the fleet, there’s addiction problems.”
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