“Deadliest Catch” star Todd Meadows — who died at sea while filming Season 22 of the Discovery Channel reality series — makes heartbreaking comments during Friday’s premiere.
The episode begins with the rookie deckhand telling the camera, “We’re ready to get out there and get fishing. It’s been one of my dreams and goals to make it up here. I’ve been to Alaska a few times, but never to fish, just to vacation and to hang out with family.”
The 25-year-old from Washington state marvels, “Everything up here that I’ve experienced so far is just so much bigger. Everything’s scaled up. It smells different, feels different.”
Meadows — who is survived by his three young sons — explains that while the job comes with “a lot of risk,” he wants to show his boys that it’s important to pursue one’s passions.
“I just want my kids to know that I want them to work towards [their] dreams and goals. Don’t let anything slow you down,” Meadows says, adding, “It’s gonna be fun. I’m just fortunate that I fell in love with it.”
The screen then cuts to a title card with his photo and the words, “In Memory of Todd Meadows, 2000-2006.”
Later in the episode, Meadows’ captain, Rick Shelford, makes an eerie remark about the Bering Sea’s “shredding currents and towering waves.”
A priest is also shown stopping by Shelford’s Aleutian Lady fishing vessel and blessing the crew before their charter.
As Page Six previously reported, cameras captured everything that occurred on the ship before, during and after Meadows’ Feb. 25 death. However, Discovery insisted they would not air the death itself out of respect for his loved ones.
Notably, Meadows’ family has since lawyered up.
Shelford announced Meadows’ death on Facebook on March 2, writing in part, “February 25, 2026 was the most tragic day in the history of the Aleutian Lady on the Bering Sea. We lost our brother, Todd Meadows.”
Shelford noted that Meadows was “the newest member of [their] crew” but praised his work ethic, contagious smile, infectious laughter and love for his family, including his children.
Page Six later spoke with Meadows’ fellow deckhand Trey John Green III, who gave us a detailed account of what he claimed happened aboard the boat approximately 170 miles north of Alaska’s Dutch Harbor in the late afternoon of Feb. 25.
According to Green, the notoriously treacherous water was actually “calm” that day, even though it was “only a degree or two above freezing.”
Green told us that many of the vessel’s crew members had taken turns getting into the pots — baited, rigid traps used to catch shellfish — to sift through crabs retrieved from the ocean.
Green alleged that Meadows was still inside one of the 900-pound pots when it went “over the rail” and back into the water, claiming the other crew members screamed when they saw what was happening.
“It’s one of those things that none of us really understand. I don’t know what happened,” Green explained.
“So that’s what Todd was doing. The pot is sitting in the launcher, and Todd was actually inside the pot.”
Green emphasized that Meadows was “in the right place at the right time,” “doing exactly what he was supposed to be doing” when the incident occurred.
“We’re like, ‘Holy crap, he’s gonna sink to the bottom. We’re not gonna have any way to get this pot back up,’” Green recalled thinking, adding that he immediately ran to the back of the ship, climbed on top of the other pots and looked for Meadows.
“I see Todd. He’s floating, he’s swimming. He’s got huge baby blue eyes. And I can still, probably from like 100 yards away, I could still see his eyes looking around,” Green recalled.
He said he kept his finger on Meadows while Shelford turned the ship around to get within a few feet of him.
“Todd’s still alive, he’s still swimming, he’s still trying to hang in there. We get next to him, and then Steve [Porter] — Steve is the — every boat has a designated rescue swimmer for this exact kind of scenario.
“Steve was already geared up and was already in the diving suit,” Green told us, adding that “when Steve jumped in the water, the harness that was attached to the crane actually broke.”
Green said other crew members then managed to get a life sling that’s attached to the crane into the water.
At this point, Green explained that Meadows was able to work with Porter and get himself into the sling. Green said Meadows was “halfway up” and “almost back on the boat” when he “fell back into the water.”
“The second time we went to go lift him up, Todd was just — he was lifeless,” Green lamented. “He didn’t have any more — like I said, the first time, he was fighting, trying to get onto the sling. And then the second time, he was just — he was lifeless.”
According to Green, Meadows was in the water for only “three or four minutes” before they successfully got him back on the vessel, but by that point, he was already “turning blue” as foam came out of his mouth and nose.
Still, Green said he and others began performing CPR “right away.”
“We finally brought him inside and continued CPR. The boat has an AED [machine] … it’s basically a defibrillator. And we tried to use that, too, and it just — nothing was working. And finally, finally, after a half hour, 45 minutes of trying to save him, Captain came down and said, ‘Guys, it’s not gonna work,’” Green recalled.
He explained to us that the Aleutian Lady was about “12 hours away” from Dutch Harbor when they exhausted all rescue efforts. He said the crew then made the difficult decision to wrap Meadows’ body in a tarp, place it in the freezer to preserve it and head back to town.
Meadows’ cause of death was later determined to be “drowning by probable hypothermia” and “submersion of body in cold water.”
Green admitted to us that Meadows was not wearing a lifejacket, noting, “On this boat, we don’t wear lifejackets. I don’t really know what the reason is.”
The US Coast Guard’s investigation remains ongoing.
“Deadliest Catch” Season 22 premieres Friday at 8 p.m. on the Discovery Channel.
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