'Deadliest Catch' Alum Jerod Sechrist Arrested for Drug Possession

Deadliest Catch Captain Wild Bill Wichrowski's former Cape Caution deckhand, Jerod Sechrist, is in trouble with the law, TMZ reported Tuesday, getting arrested last week on heroin possession and paraphernalia charges.

The 33-year-old former deckhand was far from Dutch Harbor, Alaska, when he was taken into custody, being arrested by Tampa, Florida, police on the felony drug charge after being taken in on an open warrant for a previous reckless driving case. Upon being taken into custody, police allegedly did an in-house test on a baggie of white powder they found on his person, which came back positive for heroin.

Sechrist only made a brief appearance on Deadliest Catch on a few episodes in 2016, aggravating his fellow crew by struggling to differentiate between male crabs that are legal to catch and female crabs that are illegal to catch.

Ahead of the 2019 crab season, Wild Bill opened up about how his crew has changed over the years to PopCulture.com, revealing that there were problems of addiction rampant throughout the industry of which he remains mindful.

"It's harder to find excellent guys," he explained at the time. "They used to be lined up 12 deep when we were making the crazy rock star money, but now it's almost easier to mold the ones you have and obviously, there's, throughout the fleet, there's addiction problems."

"I'm always the watchdog, keeping an eye on them, and I can see it from here to the other side of the island when anybody messes up," Wild Bill added. "My one guy, [deck boss Nick McGlashan], was down pretty hard for a long time, and everybody pretty much gave up on him. He had helped me get where I am today, and I put a lot into him and I tend to get a lot out of him, and I hope that he keeps his head straight."

It's a "healthier bunch" altogether on the Summer Bay nowadays: "It's funny, but my guys are — instead of sitting around reading whatever kind of magazines — they're all sitting around reading the Bible and getting their head together."

Photo credit: Discovery