View full sizeDerrick Ray and Josh Harris discuss business on season 7 of "Deadliest Catch"It's been a dramatic season on Discovery Channel's
which began with a memorial for the late Capt.
-- who died after suffering a stroke last season -- and continued with fireworks between Harris' sons, Jake and Josh, and the new captain of Harris' ship, the
.
Derrick Ray, a Seaside native who still lives there part time, took over Harris' ship after Harris was rushed to the hospital last crab season. Ray's no-nonsense ways clashed with a looser style the crew had been accustomed to under Harris. Ray quickly became a polarizing figure, with some fans calling him a jerk (and much worse) in online message boards while others defended his tough tactics with 25-year-old Jake and 28-year-old Josh.
Ray, 49, is currently working as a tour boat captain in Ketchikan, Alaska, but he gets back to Oregon about three months out of the year. He's been a commercial fisherman since graduating high school and spent more than a decade as captain of The Siberian Sea, a fishing vessel designed specifically for the Bering Sea. For 20 years he was friends with Phil Harris and Cornelia Marie Devlin, a majority owner of the Cornelia Marie (Jake and Josh own a smaller percentage of the boat).
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Tuesday night
Ray clashed with Jake and Josh and other crew members early in the season over their work ethic and whether Jake, who has been through a stint in rehab, was using drugs on the boat. Their conflict reaches a boiling point in Tuesday night's episode. Questions and answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.
Q: Where did you grow up?
A:
In Seaside. I was raised there, I haven't grown up yet. I'm working on that. I took off outta there in 1980. My dad was a logger and I was going to be a logger. I sucked at school. I knew how to work, I wasn't stupid, I just didn't want to be in school. They laid off 400 people two months before I graduated, so logging wasn't an option. I jumped on the first boat out of Astoria for Alaska.
Q: How did you end up on "Deadliest Catch"?
A:
Phil was a friend and Cornelia needed someone she could count on. Phil had said my name when he was sick, along with a couple of other guys.
Q: Who hired you to captain the Cornelia Marie?
A:
It was Cornelia. Phil got sick and they called and I packed a bag. Two hours later I was headed to the Portland airport. They filmed the whole time during Opilio crab season last year but the boys weren't on the boat. They brought Josh back for 24 hours so they could film him on the boat. You read some of the blog sites and they think the boys were on the boat.
The part they did show of me that season I was an easy-going nice guy -- and I am. The best way to explain it is when I step on a fishing boat, my ego is as big as the Bering Sea. I'm the captain, it's my boat and it's my job to take care of it. I ran boats for 26 years in the Bering Sea and I only had one guy who had to get four stitches and we never had to stop fishing or anything. People are worked up. There's just a bunch of crazy fans out there.
Watch Derrick and Josh battling earlier this season:
Q: Did you have any qualms about being brought in to take over the reins of Phil's ship?
A:
When I got the phone call from Cornelia, after I hung up the phone, I sat in my house for 10 minutes and thought, "Do I really want to go do this?" I've watched the show, I know how they're portraying the job I've loved my whole life and it's not as accurate as it could be. And then I was like, "I'm not going to worry about that part of it."
Q: You're more of a rules guy than the Cornelia Maria crew is used to. I'm sure some people wonder if you were hired to captain a boat or if you were cast as the anti-Phil.
A:
I was hired to captain a boat.
Everybody knew my history and how I ran boats. I've always been a no-B.S. kind of guy and Cornelia knew that. Basically, there wasn't any problems until the boys showed up for King crab season this year.
Q: Did you know Jake and Josh in advance of becoming captain of the Cornelia Maria?
A:
I knew them when they were little kids back in the '90s. I never saw either one past the age of 12 until I went up to take the boat out. I had watched "Deadliest Catch" -- so I'd seen them on TV. I knew the stories and I knew Phil and what they were like from guys who fished with them, but I didn't realize it was as bad as it was.
Q: Some "Deadliest Catch" fans dislike you and others think you're trying to teach the Harris boys lessons they need to learn. Did you expect to be a polarizing figure?
A:
I didn't even think about it. We were going crab fishing. ... Josh came up to me in the wheelhouse on the third day of fishing, he looked at me and said, "We're not here to catch crab, we're here to make TV and when we've made enough TV, we're going home," and I just about fell over. Right at that moment I knew I was screwed and I knew it would get worse. I knew the relationship I had with Steve, the engineer, who was a complete bumbling buffoon, was going to get worse.
Q: Was the exchange with Josh caught on film?
A:
It's on film but they ain't gonna use it. They got a lot of things on film they're not gonna use. They're telling the story they want to tell. One of these days when "Deadliest Catch" is over if they want to wake up and be truthful with themselves, the truth will come out. It's not my place to tell it all. I just shared what happened on the boat when I was there.
Q: At one point early this season you got mad at Jake and Steve for being away too long and you yelled, "Phil's not here, he's [bleeping] dead, OK?" when the boys were in earshot. Do you regret saying that?
A:
No, I don't regret that at all. The cameras were there and that's how I felt at the time. Maybe it came across a little heavy handed but so what? I'm captain of the boat. There ain't no cryin' in crabbin'. It's a job. It's a dangerous job, but the job is no harder than most people who've got to get up everyday. I don't think I'm super-human. A lot of people work a hell of a lot harder than we do. We get a lot of time off the ocean.
The problem is, a lot of guys go out there and do the job and get the perception that they're bigger than life and they're not. You're crab fishermen. One of my favorite saying is "We're all hired for from the neck down; the only thing your head is for is to hold up your [bleeping] raincoat." Just do your job, that's all it's about.
Q: Do you regret any of your actions toward the boys or the crew?
A:
Absolutely not. I was trying to teach them, and they didn't want to listen. They were trying to make TV. They wanted to twist it their way. Whenever it's convenient for them, they pull out their "Poor, Pitiful Pearl" card and that ... don't fly with me. "My dad died, look at me, it's so tough."
The problem is they believe the editing. In their minds, Phil was a crab fisherman, a legend in the Bering Sea who will never be replaced. But he was really just an above-average fisherman in the Bering Sea. There are no legends out here, just guys who went and did their jobs. Some did it better than others. Real legends are firemen who rush into burning buildings. Legends are young men and women we send overseas to get shot, not crab fishermen.
Watch a sneak peek of next Tuesday's episode:
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