No one expects the Discovery Channel series Deadliest Catch to be all fun and games. While being on the water (hopefully with a nice breeze) sounds like a nice way to spend time, crab fishing can be scary. That’s why we want to know more about Chris Scambler, one of the most memorable cast members on the show.
Since premiering in 2005, Deadliest Catch has had over 300 episodes and 20 seasons so far. Chris Scambler appeared on the series as a greenhorn, or a member of the crew who was fairly new. We want to know what happened to him on Deadliest Catch and where he is now.
What happened to Deadliest Catch cast member Chris Scambler?
Some Deadliest Catch crew members have died, and Chris Scambler had a horrible time while filming season 8 of the Discovery Channel show, which aired in 2012. While he lived, he got so dehydrated that, according to Distractify, he couldn’t stay on the boat he was working on. Anyone who saw these episodes can agree that this was really disturbing.
As Chris went through the motions of the job, his neck and arms began hurting. He passed out because he was so dehydrated, and also from being understandably freaked out by what happened to him. Anyone who watched this Deadliest Catch episode definitely remembers how scary it was to witness Chris in such bad shape.
According to Entertainment Weekly, Captain Keith Colburn explained that this was serious enough for him to let the Coast Guard know. He said that it was rare that he would phone them because “you make sure that you know what you’re talking about. You don’t want to be the boy who cried wolf. You don’t want to exaggerate the facts, you don’t want to underscore the facts.” From this interview, it sounds like Colburn was distressed by what happened.
As Today.com reported, Chris’s dehydration resulted in the Coast Guard airlifting him to a hospital in Alaska. While this is absolutely not something any fisherman wants to go through, viewers breathed a huge sigh of relief knowing he would be alright. This wasn’t the only crisis that the Deadliest Catch crew members faced in 2012, though. Michael Rogers, who was called “Bear,” ended up getting his leg amputated because of “necrotizing fasciitis” (aka flesh-eating bacteria… yikes).
In Deadliest Catch season 8, episode 5, “Alien Abduction,” Chris has a tough time on the Wizard because this is his first time working this type of job. The episode follows the typical quick pace of the series, but also lets viewers get to know Chris a little bit better, and shares his nerves about working on the boat. While we can’t relate to what the cast members go through in every episode, we can admit we’d feel the same, because this isn’t an easy thing to do.
Chris Scambler’s dehydration was followed in the next two episodes, and the fact that so much screentime was devoted to it proves how horrifying it was. Although he was able to drink Gatorade, that wasn’t enough to fully help him. We don’t even want to imagine what could have happened if he hadn’t been taken to a hospital.
Dehydration is a big problem for many people who work on boats. According to NRS.com, it’s common to not get a moment to drink water because they’re working so hard, and there’s also the fact that fishermen are sweating in the sun and doing such intense physical activity. While fishing for crab can be terrifying, CNN Money pointed out in 2012 while 7.3 crab fishermen died on average in Alaska in the 1990s, one passed away between 2006 and 2012. Of course, that’s still one death too many, and as we know from Chris on Deadliest Catch, something terrible can occur at any moment on the water.
Is Chris still on Deadliest Catch?
While Chris Scambler made an impression on us as a Deadliest Catch cast member, he’s not on the show anymore. He only appeared in four episodes in 2012.. and wow, what a group of episodes they were. Each of his episodes has a pretty unnerving title: “The Aftermath,” “I Don’t Wanna Die,” “Vital Signs,” and “Alien Abduction.”
That wasn’t the last Deadliest Catch fans saw of Chris, though. In 2018, he appeared in the movie Deadliest Catch: Coast Guard Heroes. But as for appearing on the Discovery Channel series itself, he was only a cast member briefly. While Deadliest Catch is still going strong, we haven’t seen him work with Captain Keith Colburn since.
As for what Chris is doing now, we’re not too sure. He doesn’t seem to have a social media presence (and if he has an Instagram, it’s definitely private or hard to find). Maybe he’s still working in crab fishing, or maybe he changed career paths after his terrible dehydration, which we would totally get. We hope he’s doing much better and that he’s never gone through anything like this since. As EW mentioned, Chris Scambler got into crab fishing and wanted his daughters to look up to him, so we can hope he’s had some nice, peaceful, happy times with his family since this awful ordeal.