Deckhand Todd Meadows died last month during production of Season 22 of the Discovery Channel series The deadliest hunt. At the time his death was first reported, few details were shared. On Friday, Meadows’ deckmate and shipmate Aleutian explained what had happened.
Trey John Green III said Page six The Bering Sea was “calm” in the late afternoon of February 20, but he added that the water was “only one or two degrees above freezing.” The ship’s crew members took turns boarding the boats to examine the crabs they had just caught. Green said Meadows was in a container, placed in the ship’s sling, when he fell “over the rail” and into the cold water.
“It’s one of those things that none of us really understand,” Green, 30, said. “I don’t know what happened.”
Green added that Meadows, then 25, was “doing exactly what he was supposed to be doing.” “We say, ‘Oh my God, it’s going to sink to the bottom. We’re going to have no way of putting this pot back up again.'”
But Green says he saw Meadows escape the bowl and try to swim. He was not wearing a life jacket, nor were any of the crew members.
Meadows was in the water for only “three or four minutes” before a swimmer assigned to the boat retrieved him from the sea. Green said he was already “lifeless.”
The crew attempted CPR and used a defibrillator, but the efforts were unsuccessful. The crew wrapped Meadows’ body in a tarp and “placed it in a freezer for safekeeping and to return to the city,” the newspaper wrote.
“Everyone did everything they could,” Green said, adding that production cameras captured “everything.”
“This remains an active U.S. Coast Guard investigation,” a Discovery Channel spokesperson said in a statement shared with . Hollywood Reporter. “We are assisting them in their efforts and cannot comment at this time.”
The Coast Guard says it is “conducting a marine casualty investigation following the death of a crew member aboard the fishing vessel Aleutian Lady, near Dutch Harbor.”
“Our deepest condolences to Mr. Meadows’ family, friends and colleagues,” Capt. Christopher Culpepper, commander of the U.S. Coast Guard Sector Western Alaska and the U.S. Arctic, said in a news release. “This is a tragic reminder of the dangers fishermen face every day. We are committed to a thorough investigation to understand what happened and to help prevent future tragedies at sea.”
“We have lost our brother Todd Meadows,” Aleutian Lady Captain Rick Shelford wrote in a Facebook post last week. “Todd was the newest member of our crew; he quickly became part of the family. His love of fishing and strong work ethic earned him everyone’s immediate respect. His smile was contagious, and the sound of his laugh as he walked up the wheelhouse stairs or above the deck is something we will always carry with us.”
The deadliest huntproduced by Fremantle’s Original Productions, unfortunately lives up to its name: Meadows is by no means the first death of a cast member on the job.
