‘Deadliest Catch’ star Nick Mavar dies at age 59 after ‘medical emergency’

Nick Mavar, a fisherman who worked as a deckhand on the reality TV show “Deadliest Catch,” died Thursday in Alaska.

He was 59 years old.

The police chief for the Bristol Bay Borough Police Department told Deadline that Mavar, who was born in Croatia and worked aboard the F/V Northwestern, had a medical emergency in the town of Naknik.

The president said Mavar was taken to hospital where he died of natural causes.

From 2005 to 2021, he appeared in 98 episodes of the ongoing Discovery Channel series about the brutal conditions faced by commercial crab fishermen.

The fisherman can also be seen in his spin-off films such as “Deadliest Catch: Siberian Winter” and “Deadliest Catch: The Bait”.

He abruptly left the show after rupturing his appendix on the plane during a flight in December 2020.

The intense medical incident, which is well-documented in the series, leads Mavar to sue one of the boat’s owners, Sig Hansen, and his wife.

Mavar claimed that he did not receive prompt medical treatment during the pandemic.

Mavar also alleged in his lawsuit that his delayed care led to serious complications, including a ruptured appendix containing a cancerous tumor.

Hunter’s death comes just a few years after his former Deadliest Catch co-stars – Mahlon Reyes and Nick McGlashan – died in 2020.