Phil Harris, Captain of a Crab Boat on Deadliest Catch, Dies

Phil Harris, known to fans of the Discovery series Deadliest Catch as captain of the crab fishing vessel Cornelia Marie, died February 9, 2010, in Anchorage, Alaska. According to news reports, the cause was an intracranial hemorrhage related to a stroke he suffered a month before his passing. He was 53.

Born December 19, 1956, in Bothell, Washington, Harris was eight years old when he began fishing with his father. He began crab fishing after high school, and by 21 he was one of the youngest captains of a crab boat n the Bering Sea, at the time of his death he had been captain of the Cornelia Marie for more than 20 years.

Deadliest Catch, premiered in 2004, and the Cornelia Marie has been featured prominently since the first season. Since it began, the show has received 20 Primetime Emmy nominations and won the Emmy for outstanding cinematography for a nonfiction series in 2008.

During the 2008 season, Harris was thrown from his bunk during a storm and thought he had broken his ribs. After coughing up blood for hours, his sons and crew convinced him to seek medical attention and enlisted the film crew to watch his condition. He was determined to have suffered a pulmonary embolism, a potentially life-threatening condition. Treatment and recuperation kept him from fishing for almost a year. He returned to fishing in January 2009.

A year later, on January 29, 2010, during the sixth season of Deadliest Catch, Harris suffered a stroke while harbored in St. Paul Island, Alaska. He was flown to Anchorage for surgery, and was placed in an induced coma to reduce cranial blood pressure and swelling. He awoke from the coma after his condition had improved. Although he was squeezing hands, talking and showing other signs of improvement , he did not survive.

Harris, who had been married and divorced twice, is survived by two sons, Joshua and Jacob, who worked as deckhands aboard the Cornelia Marie.