What happened to Nick Mavar? Deadliest Catch deckhand passes away at 59

Longtime Deadliest Catch deckhand Nick Mavar sadly passed away in Alaska on June 13, 2024. Bristol Bay Police Chief Jeffrey Eldie confirmed the news of his death to Deadline, saying that Mavar's family had been notified.

Ahead of his untimely death, Eldie noted that Nick Mavar had suffered a medical emergency while he was at a boatyard in Naknek, which is on the northeast side of Bristol Bay. He said that paramedics were called for the incident on Thursday afternoon, and the reality TV star was immediately taken to the local hospital. Unfortunately, he was pronounced dead after being transported to the medical facility and the examination determined that he died of "natural causes."

Nick Mavar, whose legal name was Nikola Mavar Jr., was 59 years old at the time of his death.

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Deadliest Catch fame Nick Mavar's career explored

Nick Mavar starred in 17 seasons of the Discovery Channel's real-life high-sea adventure documentary, Deadliest Catch, as a deckhand in Sig Hansen's F/V Northwestern fishing boat. He featured in a total of 98 episodes between seasons 1 and 17 before he exited the show in 2020 because of a health scare.

The deckhand's appendix ruptured while filming the show, which later showed a cancerous tumor. He was last seen on the show's season 17 episode 12, which aired on July 6, 2021.

Besides being a familiar face in the OG series, Nick Mavar also appeared as a deckhand in several spinoffs with subtitles, including Inside the Catch (2012), Legends Born and Broken (2017), Evolution of Danger (2017), and The Bait. Recently, he was also the deckhand of the same fishing boat in the 2020 movie spinoff of the series, Deadliest Catch: Siberian Winter.

Following his medical emergency onboard the fishing boat which was chronicled on the show, Mavar sued the owners of the vessel for $1 million, noting that there was no proper plan in place to get him the medical help he needed at the time, which was during the COVID-19 pandemic. He said that he was "seriously and permanently injured" while on board the Northwestern.

Not keen to take responsibility for the incident, the boat owners sued the show for the same several months, placing the blame of negligence on the production company. The case is still ongoing, although the judge had ruled to suspend the proceedings as it awaits the resolution of the reality TV star's case in King County, which was scheduled for an April 2025 trial.

Before his ruptured appendix, Nick Mavar was a victim of another incident during the filming of a Deadliest Catch episode. A hook came loose during a storm, which hit Mavar in the face and ended up breaking his nose.