Blake Painter (Deadliest Catch) death

[CaptainCrunch]

He was a the Captain of the Maverick for two seasons (2 and 3) after being a deck boss in the first season.


found dead in his home


https://www.ctvnews.ca/entertainment...home-1.3951243


Since he left the show it sounds like his spiraled and suffered from a lot of fishing related health problems.

[icecube]

What is a "fishing related health problem" exactly? Bad back? Bad wrists? Too much mercury in the diet?

[CaptainCrunch]

He lived with severe pain and fisherman claws (damage to the hands that causes them to curl up). He got surgery for it, but he also had a bunch of other injuries that he had suffered from where he'd had hands caught in crushing devices had had extremities impaled by various hooks.


He was also looking at it in a severe car accident a few years ago.


Most of these guys make pretty good money, from reading up on the show. On average a deck hand is making a thousand bucks or more a day on the larger boats with bigger quotas, and they supposedly are working two key seasons.



But it does take a toll on these guys and a lot of them wreck themselves in making a lot of money in fewer days.


It is better then when the whole system worked on the derby though.


One fisherman who did a column for Cracked did talk about the rampant drug use that happens with these fisherman that's glossed over. No one can work 24 to 40 hours of hard physical labor without some help.


And a lot of these guys go home with a bunch of money and a lot of pain.

[Jiri Hrdina]

I think the show has done a fairly reasonable job of exposing some of the substance abuse problems.
But yeah with that much money floating around in places where there's not a lot to do - drugs become a big problem.

[CaptainCrunch]

Jake Harris has had a lot of problems since he left the show, with arrests, getting near beaten to death. But it sounds like he's in recovery now.


Its not even a matter of having nothing to do in the North. Most of these guys fly home and home port in seattle. They have a ton of money and they're young and for the most part uneducated, and they party and piss it away and by the time the next season comes around they're broke.



A lot of guys use the first couple of weeks at sea as a drying out facility, which must be miserable.