fishing trip uncle bryn

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Gavin & Stacey fishing trip: what REALLY happened on Uncle Bryn and Jason’s boat?

This should help solve the truth behind that gavin & stacey fishing trip.

Its been 17 years since BBC's Gavin and Stacey first graced our TV screens which means for more than 10 years we've been wondering what happened on the fishing trip.

It’s hard to believe that the final episode of the series aired in January 2010 isn't it?

Yup, it was New Year’s Day 2010 when we watched Neil "Smithy" Smith (James Corden) talk Vanessa Shanessa "Nessa" Jenkins (Ruth Jones) out of marrying Dave "Coaches"' Gooch (Steffan Rhodri), and Stacey Shipman (née West) (Joanna Page) announce that she was pregnant with Gavin Shipman's (Mathew Horne) baby.

And plenty of other loose ends were tied up along the way, too.

All barring ONE, that is.

Oh yes, we’re talking about Uncle Bryn West (Rob Brydon) and Jason West's (Robert Wilfort) mysterious fishing trip.

For years we've all been wondering what actually happened between the pair and our hopes were raised when the actors all reunited for a Christmas Day special in 2019.

The shocking reunion came shortly after Ruth Jones - the show’s co-creator - said that there were "no plans" for a Gavin & Stacey reunion but then she backtracked with James Corden confirming it was returning for a festive special.

Unfortunately we're still none the wiser as to what happened so while we hope that they come together AGAIN so we can figure out what happened, let's recap what we DO know about that fishing trip, shall we?

• They did it because they were cold
• It involves soup
• It potentially involves nudity
• It 'defies the laws of gravity'
• It’s legal in Wales

And, for those of you who assumed that it involved a sexual liaison between the pair of them, we’re here to tell you that you’re wrong.

WATCH: Brynn FINALLY explains what happened on that fishing trip and WHY

How do we know?

Well, Bryn and Jason are uncle and nephew - making it incest if they were to hop into bed together.

And incest is ILLEGAL in the UK, which is completely at odds with that ‘it’s legal in Wales’ comment.

SO WHAT HAPPENED, DAMN IT?

Well, the internet has plenty of theories.

One viewer wrote, "More than likely, Bryn and Jason went out fishing. Jason fell in and Bryn jumped in after him.

"After pulling him put, Bryn knew that getting warm was essential and, being Bryn, didn't think before he got them both stripped to get out of their soaking wet clothes and to cuddle to get warm.

"Upon realising, after a while, that they were two men, not to mention uncle and nephew, and both gay, they both have a sickening feeling of guilt about the situation."

We like it… but it lacks any soupy substance, doesn’t it?

Another suggested, "They fell in the water, and ate warm soup by a fire in a bid to get warm.

"When that didn’t work, they ditched their clothes (to increase body heat) and clambered into a tree / hammock to sleep.

"I assume spooning was involved and perhaps someone woke up with morning glory wood and they decided to try keep it secret for the sake of their reputations."

And one VERY loyal fan penned a whole piece of fan fiction about that fishing trip - with a slightly different twist.

It suggested that the duo had been intent on camping out during their fishing trip, but it soon became too cold to remain in their tents.

Instead, they checked into a hotel - and the proprietor, worried about their exposure to the rain and winds, made up a special vat of leek and potato soup for the pair to enjoy in their rooms.

While Jason was in the bathroom, Bryn made use of the television set in their room to find an “adult program" that would keep them entertained throughout the night.

He settled back in the bed to watch the admittedly frisky show, resting the mug of soup on his stomach to keep himself warm.

However, when Jason came in, Bryn jumped, spilling the soup all over his trousers - and even causing some to splash upwards onto the ceiling.

With the adult program still playing in the background, things obviously looked a little confusing to Jason - and the entire situation remained VERY awkward between the pair of them forever more.

We quite like this theory ( you can read the whole thing here ) because it checks off a lot of the crucial points.

There’s soup, there’s gravity-defying antics (it hit the ceiling), there’s a healthy dose of awkwardness, and it remains legal in this country.

Then again, we doubt we’ll ever know what really happened.

After all, both James Corden and Ruth Jones have admitted they didn’t have an actual event in mind when they wrote it into the script; they wanted it to remain a mystery for viewers forever.

Mission achieved, guys.

Now we're just desperate to know if Smithy accepted Nessa's proposal. Seriously, BBC, how could you leave us hanging like that?

Thankfully, just when we thought we'd never get an answer, BBC seemingly CONFIRMED that the show will return .

Yep, this is not a drill. They may not have given us a filming date or any solid time scales as to when we can expect this shiny new series BUT, they did tell us that it might happen "one day."

That's good enough for us.

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What happened on the fishing trip? Mystery of Uncle Bryn and Jason at the heart of Gavin and Stacey, explained

Something occurred between uncle bryn and his nephew jason on a fishing trip in gavin and stacey - but we may never know exactly what it was.

As soon as the  Gavin and Stacey Christmas Special   was announced, one question rose to the forefront of fans’ minds.

It wasn’t a concern for how the eponymous couple themselves have fared in marriage and parenthood, or where Smithy, Nessa and Neil the not-a-baby-anymore now find themselves .

No, the central issue for the  Christmas Special  remains the show’s enduring and intricate mystery: what happened between Uncle Bryn (Rob Brydon) and his nephew Jason (Robert Wilfort) on that  fishing trip ?

Speaking on ITV’s  This Morning  promoting the special, Stacey actress Joanna Page dropped a tantalising hint to fans: “Tune in because there might just be a conversation about the fishing trip.”

But what have we found out about the incident so far, and will we ever really know what occurred?

The fishing trip incident: the evidence so far

The mystery of the fishing trip has been elaborately drip-fed through the three series of Gavin and Stacey , with James Corden and Ruth Jones dropping hints into the script with palpable glee .

At first, the clues were vague, with Stacey’s mother Gwen gently remarking to Bryn when Jason arrives for Stacey’s wedding : “You two got on as good as gold until that fishing trip…”

She is cut off by her agitated brother-in-law, and when she asks what happened he says desperately: “I can’t say! You know I can’t!”

More clues come when we see Bryn and Jason discussing the incident at Gavin and Stacey’s wedding. In an attempt to reassure his uncle, Jason says: “I never told anyone, you know. And besides, it wasn’t a big deal. Lots of people do it, it’s not against the law.”

But Bryn, again anguished, replies: “Jason please, how can I ever forget that look on your face?!”

The plot thickens when we find out that Bryn caved at a vulnerable moment six months after the incident, and told Nessa’s dubious on-off beau Dave Coaches.

He tells his nephew that, after playing a round of crazy golf alone on Barry Island in the rain (to hide his tears), he revealed “every damn thing” to Dave, who was working in the kiosk.

“Even about…” Jason replies, before Bryn interjects, shouting: “Yes, everything!”

Bryn says that Dave couldn’t have told anyone because “he was sickened by the whole thing,” before Jason again re-iterates that whatever happened is “perfectly legal in this country”.

Although sworn to secrecy, a conversation Dave Coaches later has with Bryn then reveals perhaps the weirdest hint as to the nature of the mystery.

“You know what? I wish I didn’t know either but I do,” he says. “But it’s difficult for me as well, seeing you standing there with a soup. It sets my mind racing, you know?

“Even if I wanted to tell anyone, I wouldn’t know where to start because in my mind it’s a physical impossibility. It defies gravity.”

We come closest to discovering the nature of the incident during a chance encounter between Bryn and James in the Shipmans’ kitchen during the last Christmas special.

“I’m glad we’re friends again Uncle Bryn,” says Jason, stood in his pants in the Shipman’s kitchen as they share a glass of milk, to which Bryn earnestly replies: “Me too.”

Discussion then turns to Dave’s knowledge of the incident, with Bryn explaining: “There’s the occasional comment, the odd look… times when I know how a man and his nephew could…” before being cut off by his nephew.

They eventually hug, just as Dave Coaches enters the kitchen (also seeking milk). Finding them embracing in comparative undress, he says: “Listen, it’s none of my… you can do whatever you like.”

However, a riled Bryn insists: “It’s time for the truth, we are going to talk about what happened on that fishing trip right here, right now. It was freezing cold, and when you’re that cold…”

At that moment, Gavin enters the kitchen too, and the precise nature of the incident remains a tantalising secret.

So… what happened?

The obvious insinuation, of course, with the repeated assertions of its legality (at least in Wales), Dave’s evident discomfort and the claim that “it was freezing cold”, is of some sort of tryst between Uncle Bryn and his nephew.

However, one alternative theory dictates that something entirely innocent occurred, at least from most people’s perspective – and that’s the whole point of the joke.

Bryn, after all, is hardly a worldly man: he takes ecstatic joy from a power shower or a sat nav, and makes his own “my niece went to Greece and all I got was this lousy t-shirt” t-shirts.

He also displays an unabashed and seemingly oblivious penchant for slapstick homo-eroticism at various moments in the show.

One might perhaps expect him to temper this slightly if the fishing trip incident, which clearly had such a profound effect on Bryn’s usually affable, innocent demeanour, involved a liaison with his nephew.

Obviously, this theory that something innocent lies at the heart of it appears to be contradicted by Dave’s apparent disgust at the “gravity-defying” incident (although… where does the soup come in?).

There is also Jason’s concern at his uncle disclosing the details of the incident to the coach entrepreneur – but this could all be part of the joke.

Sadly for some, but perhaps fittingly, the most likely outcome is that we will never know.

Think the drawer in Alan Partridge’s hotel room, to contents of which provoked a mixture of horror, revulsion and amusement from anyone who opened it, and intense embarrassment from Alan.

Gavin and Stacey is a series riddled with often entirely impenetrable recurring in-jokes , from Gavin’s family and Smithy twiddling pretend moustaches as they chorus “don’t mind if I don’t!” to  that Owain Hughes gag (“does he?!”).

It would therefore be entirely in keeping with the show’s style that the whole fishing incident will remain a gloriously baffling mystery forever – and maybe that’s the way it should be.

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AI gives most likely explanation of what happened on the Gavin & Stacey fishing trip

Will we finally discover what happened on that fishing trip.

Kit Roberts

It's one of those television mysteries which has echoed down the years... what happened on the infamous fishing trip in Gavin and Stacey ?

Anyone who has seen the show will be familiar with the mysterious incident between Uncle Bryn and Jason which left the pair barely on speaking terms. Any interaction between the pair becomes muted, and suffice to say the precise nature of the fishing trip is never revealed.

Naturally, there has been a plethora of theories about the mysterious incident over the years. However, among the most widely acknowledged is that it has something to do with Uncle Bryn very clearly being a closeted gay man.

While the infamous fishing trip is resolved later in the series and Bryn and Jason do reconcile, it is never revealed exactly what happened.

In the absence of a revealed source, we asked AI what it thought had actually happened on the fishing trip. It certainly came up with some interesting ideas.

Here's what it had to say:

"There are many theories about what happened on the Gavin & Stacey boat trip, but the truth is that we will never know for sure.

"The show's creators have said that they will never reveal what happened, and they have even written a script for an episode that would have shown what happened, but it was never filmed.

"Some of the most popular theories include:

• Bryn and Jason fell into the water and had to strip down to their underwear to warm up.
• Bryn and Jason kissed, but then realized that they were both gay and felt guilty.
• Bryn and Jason had a fight and ended up hitting each other.
• Bryn and Jason did something else that is so embarrassing that they can't talk about it.

"Ultimately, it's up to each individual fan to decide what they think happened on the boat trip. The mystery is part of what makes it so funny and memorable."

Well, there you have it. Even the colossal brain power of artificial intelligence admits that we will never know for certain what happened on the infamous fishing trip.

My personal favourite has to be the final option that there is something unrelated which is simply too embarrassing to even contemplate. We've all been there.

Surely the most important part of the whole thing is that Bryn and Jason were ultimately able to put it behind them.

Of course, Bryn himself would be fascinated by AI.

"I tell you what Gavin, they have artificial intelligence these days, and you can ask it anything you like. Whatever will they think of next!"

Topics:  News , UK News , TV and Film , Gavin And Stacey

Kit joined LADbible Group in 2023 as a community journalist. They previously worked for StokeonTrentLive, the Daily Mirror, and the Daily Star.

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Gavin and Stacey: What happened on the fishing trip?

"That bloody fishing trip, Bryn! When's it going to end, eh?"

• David Craig
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Much to the delight of fans, Gavin & Stacey returned to screens last Christmas and referenced a mystery that has puzzled audiences for over a decade.

What happened on the fishing trip? Sadly, the special didn't confirm what actually happened on Jason and Bryn's now-legendary outing - but the comedy did tease a few more details.

With the sitcom's hit 2019 special returning to our screens for a primetime Christmas Eve repeat at 8:40pm on BBC One, here's a recap of everything we know so far - as well as a few of the weird and wonderful theories the internet has produced.

There's every chance we'll never find out, with some speculating that even series creators Ruth Jones and James Corden don't know, but we've investigated and put together several clues...

The original theory

The fishing trip became harder to decode as the series progressed, with the information from series one alone suggesting a fairly simple explanation.

More like this

At Gavin and Stacey's wedding reception, Jason met Bryn outside the venue and attempted to clear the air.

He said: "I never told anyone, you know. And besides, it wasn't a big deal. Lots of people do it , it's not against the law."

Bryn replies: "Jason please, how can I ever forget that look on your face ?"

This short interaction suggests that perhaps Jason simply walked in on Bryn at a private moment, more than enough to cause serious awkwardness between an uncle and his nephew.

However, the information in series two complicates matters a lot ...

"It defies gravity"

Towards the end of the second series, Bryn revealed to Jason that he told Dave Coaches what happened six months after the incident when he was feeling particularly low.

"Oh, why did I tell him every damn thing?" he asked.

To which Jason replied: "Even about--"

Bryn interrupted and shouted: "Yes, everything!

While Dave was "sickened by the whole thing," Jason reassured Bryn by pointing out that what happened is "perfectly legal in this country."

In the final episode of the series, Dave and Bryn have a moment alone as Nessa prepares to give birth.

The following interaction is arguably the most perplexing part of this entire case, as Dave has two lines that throw the original theory into disarray.

"You know what? I wish I didn't know either but I do," he said. "But it's difficult for me as well, seeing you standing there with a soup. It sets my mind racing, you know?

"Even if I wanted to tell anyone, I wouldn't know where to start because in my mind it's a physical impossibility. It defies gravity."

This clue seems to suggest that soup was involved in whatever happened on the trip. As for gravity-defying phenomena, for simplicity's sake it could be assumed that this is an exaggeration on Dave's part...

Jason was actively involved

The final nail for the original theory comes in the 2008 Christmas special, where a reconciled Bryn and Jason discuss Dave's knowledge of the incident.

Bryn said: "There's the occasional comment. The odd look. Times when I know that he's wondering how a man and his nephew could..."

Jason cut him off saying: "Yeah, yeah, I know."

When Dave walked in on the pair of them talking, Jason dressed only in his underwear, he looked visibly uncomfortable with the situation.

Bryn went on the defensive: "David, it is not what you think."

Dave replied: "Listen, it's none of my... you can do whatever you like."

These two exchanges suggest that whatever happened was something that both Bryn and Jason were actively involved in, rather than a mere accidental encounter.

"What happened was..."

It seems series creators Ruth Jones and James Corden know just how much viewers want full details of the fishing trip, and teased the entire nation with the 2019 Christmas special. When the topic of the troubling trip came up, it seems Bryn and Jason were finally ready to tell the whole family what really happened - only to be interrupted when the kids run in.

However, we did get a few more details - Bryn said: "It was very dark, in every sense of the word."

Jason replied: "And can I just point out that we knew nothing about camping."

When Jason begins to take responsibility for the incident, Bryn steps in claiming the blame belongs to him - again suggesting both were actively involved in the mysterious encounter.

So, what happened on the fishing trip?

It seems likely that somewhere between the end of the first series and the beginning of the second, Corden and Jones changed the fishing trip incident to confuse fans trying to figure out what happened.

Where the first series discusses it like an unfortunate mistake, later episodes allude to something that seems altogether more complex and disturbing.

Several fan theories present elaborate stories about Bryn and Jason stripping off and getting close to stay warm, but the incident could actually be something far less extreme.

Think about it: Bryn has lived a very sheltered life in Barry, often being amazed by the simplest of things ("is that what you would call a power shower?"), so conversely he could well be horrified by something that most people would find fairly innocuous.

Of course, that wouldn't explain why Dave and Jason are so traumatised as well, but it's a strong possibility nonetheless.

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After all, Gavin & Stacey is a series that devotes so much time to mundane scenes - eating fish and chips, ordering a curry and talking about oven gloves - that it would be in-keeping with the show's sense of humour if its one huge mystery is revealed to be something quite ordinary.

It's so easy to imagine the disappointing truth finally being revealed, only for Pam to shout: "IS THAT IT?"

The Gavin and Stacey 2019 special is repeated on BBC One on Christmas Eve. Looking for something else to watch? Check out our TV Guide or our guide to the best Christmas TV for 2020

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What happened on the fishing trip on Gavin and Stacey? Theories explained

• Joanne Kavanagh
• Published : 10:34, 30 Jan 2023
• Updated : 15:24, 13 Sep 2023

GAVIN and Stacey fans have long since wondered what REALLY happened on Uncle Bryn and his nephew Jason's fishing trip.

The story has been teased ever since the first series , but it has never actually been revealed what happened.

What happened on the fishing trip?

Many Gavin and Stacey fans were still left wondering what on earth happened on Uncle Bryn's ( Rob Brydon ) fishing trip with his nephew Jason (Robert Wilfort).

It was brought up again in the 2019 Christmas special , but was still not explained.

We know that what ever happened between Bryn and Jason happened because they "were very cold", and that it was "legal in Wales ", and somehow involved "soup".

With only snippets of information to go, fans have cone up with their own theories of what happened on the now famous fishing trip.

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Things got heated.

From what we know happened, it is suggested it was highly embarrassing, hence the need for secrecy.

It could also be potentially sexual due to the taboo way it’s talked about.

That could lead many people to believe that Jason and Bryn had some sort of sexual contact in order to keep warm.

However, this fan theory can be easily squashed, due to the fact Bryn also states at one point that what happened is "legal in Wales".

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As the pair are nephew and uncle, any sexual relationship they would’ve had would’ve been illegal.

They fell into the river

As we know, what happened, happened, because they "were very cold".

One fan tweeted: "More than likely, Bryn and Jason went out fishing. Jason fell in and Bryn jumped in after him.

"After pulling him put, Bryn knew that getting warm was essential and, being Bryn, didn't think before he got them both stripped to get out of their soaking wet clothes and to cuddle to get warm.

"Upon realising, after a while, that they were two men, not to mention uncle and nephew, and both gay, they both have a sickening feeling of guilt about the situation."

They went to a hotel

It suggested that the duo had been intent on camping out during their fishing trip, but it soon became too cold to remain in their tents.

Instead, they checked into a hotel - and the proprietor, worried about their exposure to the rain and winds, made up a special vat of leek and potato soup for the pair to enjoy in their rooms.

While Jason was in the bathroom, Bryn made use of the television set in their room to find an “adult program".

He settled back in the bed to watch the admittedly frisky show, resting the mug of soup on his stomach to keep himself warm.

However, when Jason came in, Bryn jumped, spilling the soup all over his trousers - and even causing some to splash upwards onto the ceiling.

With the adult program still playing in the background, things obviously looked a little confusing to Jaso.

The entire situation remained awkward between the pair of them forever more.

What is said about the fishing trip on Gavin and Stacey?

The mystery was never solved during Gavin and Stacey's original run.

Just as Uncle Bryn was finally about to tell his friends and family what actually happened during the Christmas Special, he was interrupted by the children.

But it turns out show writers Ruth Jones and James Corden had originally planned to explain the fishing trip mystery way back in series two, before changing their minds.

Lisa Edwards - who owned the house the show used as Bryn's home - previously revealed how she still has a script of a never-aired episode.

The script had been left in their home on Trinity Street in Barry and promised to solve the show's biggest mystery.

Speaking to Wales Online , Lisa said: "We have a script for an episode which was never aired.

"It was supposed to be Uncle Bryn and his nephew watching this VHS.

"They both watch it together to see what happened on the fishing trip. But they decided to not show the episode."

Unfortunately the script didn't even reveal what happened on the fishing trip, and as the episode never aired, fans remain in the dark after all these years.

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The mystery began in series one at Gavin and Stacey's wedding reception with Jason attempting to clear the air with Bryn outside the venue.

He said: "I never told anyone, you know. And besides, it wasn’t a big deal. Lots of people do it, it’s not against the law.”

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Gavin And Stacey May Have Revealed What Happened On That Fishing Trip In Unaired Scene

We must know..

Joanna Freedman

The secret behind the infamous Gavin and Stacey fishing trip is one that die hard fans of the show have been desperate to find out forever.

In case you need a recap, it all started after Uncle Bryn (Rob Brydon) and his nephew Jason (Robert Wilfort) returned scarred from something disturbing which happened on a fishing trip together - though they never revealed exactly what.

There have been many times, over the years, that it has looked as if the pair are about to divulge what went down on the BBC comedy, but they've always fallen short.

But now it has emerged that the incident from the trip could well have been revealed in season two, however Ruth Jones and James Corden cut the episode at the last minute.

What TEASES.

Lisa Edwards, who owned the house the show used as uncle Bryn's home, says that the big reveal may actually have been penned into the script many years ago, before the episode was dropped.

Speaking to Wales Online, Lisa, who still has the script in question, said: "We have a script for an episode which was never aired.

"It was supposed to be Uncle Bryn and his nephew watching this VHS.

"They both watch it together to see what happened on the fishing trip. But they decided to not show the episode."

While the script didn't actually reveal what went down on the VHS, the knowledge that their antics may well have been unveiled on the screen is sure to frustrate lovers of the show, who are still no closer to getting an answer.

Viewers were last teased on Christmas Day 2019, when Bryn was faced with photograph of himself and Jason on the trip.

"Put down the remote... for the time has come," Bryn said. "You want to know what happened?"

Dramatically, Rob Brydon's character then stood up and set the scene, explaining: "It was very dark, in every sense of the word."

"Can I just point out that we knew nothing about camping," Jason intervened.

"It was my bad. It was all my bad," Bryn went on. "You see everyone it was supposed to be... what happened was I..."

And then, BOOM. The kids ran in.

We have a very bad feeling the fishing trip is going to be one of those mysteries we all take to the grave...

Topics:  TV News , James Corden , gavin and stacey , TV Entertainment ,

Joanna is a journalist at Tyla with a particular interest in highlighting women's issues and telling inspiring first person stories. She's also their resident foodie, and loves covering exciting new beauty launches, too. Contact her at [email protected] .

@ joannafreedman

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Gavin & Stacey did explain what happened on fishing trip - but the scene was deleted

The Christmas special came very close to explaining the mystery

• 16:32, 29 DEC 2019

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The mystery behind the Gavin and Stacey fishing trip was explained, but the scene was deleted before it aired.

The comedy set in Barry returned for a one-off Christmas special with more than 11 million people tuning in.

In the episode, Uncle Bryn and his nephew Jason came very close to revealing exactly what happened on their fishing trip.

Throughout the series it's been hinted at but it's always remained one of the show's biggest mysteries.

During the Christmas special, fans thought they were about to hear what really took place that day, but just as Bryn was finally about to tell the cast what happened, he was interrupted by the children.

It's now been revealed the show's writers Ruth Jones and James Corden - who star as Nessa and Smithy - had originally planned to explain the fishing trip in series two, but ended up changing their minds about the idea.

Lisa Edwards, who owned the house the show used as uncle Bryn's home, still has a script of the episode that millions of fans want to watch the most.

Speaking previously she said: "We have a script for an episode which was never aired.

"It was supposed to be Uncle Bryn and his nephew watching this VHS."

She added: "They both watch it together to see what happened on the fishing trip. But they decided to not show the episode."

Fans were once again left without an answer on what happened during the trip as the mystery continues to intrigue millions of viewers.

The special did appear to answer one of the show's other mysteries - revealing how old Nessa is.

James and Ruth's heartwarming creation became the most-watched Christmas special since 2008, and secured a 49.2% audience share, according to the BBC.

The Christmas special faced criticism for including the uncensored Fairytale of New York and for ' pushing the idea that cannabis is okay'.

Viewers criticised it for including the use of the homophobic term 'f****t' during a scene where Nessa and Bryn sing the classic Christmas song.

Then a peer whose son killed himself after becoming hooked on high-strength cannabis has criticised the one-off special for trivialising the dangers posed cannabis.

Lord Nicholas Monson's son Rupert committed suicide aged 21 in January 2017 after developing drug-induced psychosis.

In a scene from the show, one of the characters, Dawn – played by Julia Davis – is teased by friends for worrying about her husband smoking cannabis after finding a joint in his car and branding him a "junkie".

She told Pam and Mick, played by Alison Steadman and Larry Lamb, that Pete was, "a drug addict, addicted to drugs".

When she shows them the joint she found in the glove box they laugh: "Is that it?" and tell her they used to smoke it all the time.

Lord Monson accused the programme of pushing a "strong subliminal message".

He told the Daily Mail: "With much justification, the BBC prides itself as a beacon of truth but here it has a blind spot.

"Knowledge of the potential damage of modern cannabis is hardly obscure. What then is it doing, pushing a strong subliminal message that cannabis is perfectly OK and those who fear it might be otherwise are fair game for mockery?"

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NEWS... BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT

Rob Brydon ‘haunted’ by Gavin And Stacey fishing trip mystery

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Gavin And Stacey fans have spent years wondering what on earth happened between Uncle Bryn and Jason on *that* fishing trip and Rob Brydon has shared his take on what occurred.

The mysterious expedition has had viewers racking their brains since the BBC comedy premiered in 2007 and comedian Rob revealed that he is just as clueless as the rest of us.

‘That bloody fishing trip, it haunts me,’ he told a packed audience at a recent Q&A at Carfest at Laverstoke Park Farm in Hampshire.

‘Look I don’t know, all I know are the clues that are in the show: It was very cold, it defied gravity, and it’s legal in some countries.’

Yep, this is not exactly the news we wanted to hear. Someone give us answers, for the love of Nessa!

@rhiannonedge123 What happened on fishing trip…. #carfest #fyp #gavinandstacey ♬ original sound – Rhiannon

For those who have forgotten  or who may still be playing catch-up on Gavin And Stacey , there’s a long-running joke that suggests Bryn West and his nephew Jason have a dark secret.

The only people who know what really happened are the pair involved and Dave ‘Coaches’ Gooch.

All that the viewers know is that they were on their knees when it happened, they did it because it was freezing cold, it defies the laws of gravity and it’s legal in the UK.

Oh, and whatever happened also involved soup, as in the series two finale Dave told Bryn that seeing him standing there with soup ‘sets my mind racing’.

The rest remains a mystery.

We’ve never found out why this particular part of Gavin And Stacey folklore was left without a definitive conclusion, and it’s been reported that even James Corden and Ruth Jones are also unaware of what went down.

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The Fishing Trip

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The Fishing Trip is a running joke in Gavin & Stacey. It refers to something that happened involving Bryn and Jason on a fishing trip some time before the series began (the Gavin & Stacey book indicates that it occurred late on Saturday 13 August or the early hours of Sunday 14 August, which would make it 2005). Other characters (apart from Dave Coaches , to whom Bryn "confessed") do not know the details although they do know that whatever happened caused extreme and long-lasting embarrassment to both men.

What We Know [ ]

• They were on their knees
• They did it because it was cold.
• It is legal in the United Kingdom (though it is probably illegal elsewhere)
• According to Dave , it defies the laws of gravity
• It may have something to do with soup, as Dave approaches Bryn while he is drinking soup and says "seeing you standing there there with the soup sets my mind racing" .

Participants [ ]

In Series 2, Dave Coaches is back romantically involved with Nessa therefore back accepted into the West Household. Bryn finds out that this is happenning and starts panicking, so he goes up to Jason and confesses that he has told someone about the Fishing Trip. Bryn told Jason, that Six months after the Fishing Trip, Bryn still remained crying so he went over to the Island to play a game of Crazy Golf. Afterwards he met Dave at the kiosk (where he worked) and he asked how he was and that is when all that was revealed and since then Bryn and Dave have really never gotten on. It is very awkward when Dave takes the West's to Bingo and he says.

So everything is alright now, you know, between you two because I wasn't really expecting you to be here, together. In addition in the Christmas special (2008) Bryn, Jason and Dave have a late night meeting in the kitchen all getting some milk. Dave walks in on the both of them hugging shirtless. Bryn says they are going to talk it out but Gavin walks in a few moments later breaking up the meeting.

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• 2 Neil Smith
• 3 Gavin Shipman

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What happened on the fishing trip on Gavin and Stacey? Theories explained

• Joanne Kavanagh
• Published : 5:34 ET, Jan 30 2023
• Updated : 10:29 ET, Sep 13 2023

GAVIN and Stacey fans have long since wondered what REALLY happened on Uncle Bryn and his nephew Jason's fishing trip.

The story has been teased ever since the first series, but it has never actually been revealed what happened.

What happened on the fishing trip?

Many Gavin and Stacey fans were still left wondering what on earth happened on Uncle Bryn's (Rob Brydon) fishing trip with his nephew Jason (Robert Wilfort).

It was brought up again in the 2019 Christmas special, but was still not explained.

We know that what ever happened between Bryn and Jason happened because they "were very cold", and that it was "legal in Wales ", and somehow involved "soup".

With only snippets of information to go, fans have cone up with their own theories of what happened on the now famous fishing trip.

Things got heated

From what we know happened, it is suggested it was highly embarrassing, hence the need for secrecy.

It could also be potentially sexual due to the taboo way it’s talked about.

That could lead many people to believe that Jason and Bryn had some sort of sexual contact in order to keep warm.

However, this fan theory can be easily squashed, due to the fact Bryn also states at one point that what happened is "legal in Wales".

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As the pair are nephew and uncle, any sexual relationship they would’ve had would’ve been illegal.

They fell into the river

As we know, what happened, happened, because they "were very cold".

One fan tweeted: "More than likely, Bryn and Jason went out fishing. Jason fell in and Bryn jumped in after him.

"After pulling him put, Bryn knew that getting warm was essential and, being Bryn, didn't think before he got them both stripped to get out of their soaking wet clothes and to cuddle to get warm.

"Upon realising, after a while, that they were two men, not to mention uncle and nephew, and both gay, they both have a sickening feeling of guilt about the situation."

They went to a hotel

It suggested that the duo had been intent on camping out during their fishing trip, but it soon became too cold to remain in their tents.

Instead, they checked into a hotel - and the proprietor, worried about their exposure to the rain and winds, made up a special vat of leek and potato soup for the pair to enjoy in their rooms.

While Jason was in the bathroom, Bryn made use of the television set in their room to find an “adult program".

He settled back in the bed to watch the admittedly frisky show, resting the mug of soup on his stomach to keep himself warm.

However, when Jason came in, Bryn jumped, spilling the soup all over his trousers - and even causing some to splash upwards onto the ceiling.

With the adult program still playing in the background, things obviously looked a little confusing to Jaso.

The entire situation remained awkward between the pair of them forever more.

What is said about the fishing trip on Gavin and Stacey?

The mystery was never solved during Gavin and Stacey's original run.

Just as Uncle Bryn was finally about to tell his friends and family what actually happened during the Christmas Special, he was interrupted by the children.

But it turns out show writers Ruth Jones and James Corden had originally planned to explain the fishing trip mystery way back in series two, before changing their minds.

Lisa Edwards - who owned the house the show used as Bryn's home - previously revealed how she still has a script of a never-aired episode.

The script had been left in their home on Trinity Street in Barry and promised to solve the show's biggest mystery.

Speaking to Wales Online , Lisa said: "We have a script for an episode which was never aired.

"It was supposed to be Uncle Bryn and his nephew watching this VHS.

"They both watch it together to see what happened on the fishing trip. But they decided to not show the episode."

Unfortunately the script didn't even reveal what happened on the fishing trip, and as the episode never aired, fans remain in the dark after all these years.

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The mystery began in series one at Gavin and Stacey's wedding reception with Jason attempting to clear the air with Bryn outside the venue.

He said: "I never told anyone, you know. And besides, it wasn’t a big deal. Lots of people do it, it’s not against the law.”

• Gavin and Stacey
• TV explainers

Gavin & Stacey did explain what happened on fishing trip - but the scene got deleted

The comedy returned on Christmas Day for a special episode and 11.6 million fans tuned in to watch, bt they are no closer to finding out what happened on that mysterious fishing trip

• 14:20, 29 Dec 2019
• Updated 17:52, 29 Dec 2019

Gavin & Stacey did explain what happened on that mysterious fishing trip, but the scene was deleted before it aired.

The popular BBC comedy returned on Christmas Day for a one-off episode, with 11.6 million people tuning in to watch the special.

However, many were left wondering what exactly went on during Uncle Bryn's fishing trip with his nephew Jason - a plot that has remained a mystery for years.

During the Christmas Special, fans thought they were about to hear what really took place that day, but just as Bryn was finally about to tell the cast what happened, he was interrupted by the children.

It's now been revealed the show's writers Ruth Jones and James Corden - who star as Nessa and Smithy - had originally planned to explain the fishing trip in series two, but ended up changing their minds about the idea.

Lisa Edwards, who owned the house the show used as uncle Bryn's home, still has a script of the episode that millions of fans want to watch the most.

She told Wales Online : "We have a script for an episode which was never aired.

"It was supposed to be Uncle Bryn and his nephew watching this VHS."

She added: "They both watch it together to see what happened on the fishing trip. But they decided to not show the episode."

Fans were once again left without an answer on what happened during the trip as the mystery continues to intrigue millions of viewers.

James and Ruth's heartwarming creation became the most-watched Christmas special since 2008, and secured a 49.2 per cent audience share, according to the BBC.

Delighted viewers took to Twitter to rave about the comeback, which saw Matt Horne and Joanna Page reprise their roles as the title characters, with James and Ruth playing Smithy and Nessa.

But after the episode ended on a cliff-hanger, fans are wondering if another episode could be in the works.

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Gavin & Stacey writers did reveal what happened on Uncle Bryn’s fishing trip - but then axed the scene

30 December 2019, 10:32

By Naomi Bartram

James Corden and Ruth Jones had plans to reveal what happened between Bryn and his nephew Jason.

It’s been a question which has plagued us all for more than ten years, what really happened between Uncle Bryn and Jason on that fishing trip?

Unfortunately, just as Bryn (Rob Brydon) was finally about to tell his friends and family what actually went on in the Gavin & Stacey Christmas reunion, he was interrupted by the children.

Well, now it’s been revealed that writers James Corden and Ruth Jones - who star as Nessa and Smithy - almost uncovered the truth, but decided to scrap the idea before season two.

Lisa Edwards – who owned the house belonging to Bryn in the show – said she still has a script for an episode which was was left at her home on Trinity Street in Barry.

Read More: Gavin & Stacey fans convinced they've solved Nessa's 'real age' after years of speculation

The script promised to solve the show's biggest mystery, but has never been aired.

Speaking to Wales Online, Lisa said: "We have a script for an episode which was never aired.

"It was supposed to be Uncle Bryn and his nephew watching this VHS.

Read More: Ruth Jones teases Nessa and Smithy wedding after Gavin & Stacey cliffhanger

"They both watch it together to see what happened on the fishing trip. But they decided to not show the episode."

While we’re still none the wiser about the fishing trip, the Christmas special did appear to answer one of the show's other mysteries, revealing how old Nessa is .

Following the scene in which the character admitted she was 18 years older than Stacey, one superfan called Isobel Newman wrote on Twitter: "I think I’ve worked out how old Nessa is.

"She said in the Christmas special that when Stacey was 17, she was around 35."This means that she is 18 years older than Stacey.

"When the show started, it says that both Gavin and Stacey are 26, meaning that Nessa was 44 at the start.

"Add 10 years on to that, and she’s now 54, meaning that she’s around the same age as Bryn."

Meanwhile, the reunion episode smashed records with a whopping 12.3 million viewers, the biggest ratings since 2008.

And following the huge success, actor Larry Lamb, who played Gavin’s dad Mick Shipman, has called for the series to be made into a film.

The former EastEnders star said: “To me I always think the logical thing to do would be to make a film of it.

“I think the audience in Britain is so ready for it that they would go to the ends of the Earth to go and see a movie of it. I mean, imagine those characters? It’s so much larger than life now, it’s a national treasure.”

Let’s hope that Gavin And Stacey does get turned into a film so we finally get to find out what happened on that fishing trip.

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Everything We Know About What Happened on the Fishing Trip on Gavin and Stacey

Gavin and Stacey is one of the Great British public’s favourite shows – with the adventures of Gavin, Stacey and their extended families/friends entertaining us for three years, and who can forget the 2019 Christmas reunion special.

The show had so many crazy plotlines, and while many answers were given throughout the show, there was one big question that was left unanswered – what happened on the fishing trip?

Yes, that fishing trip. Surely the darkest secret in the West family, the fishing trip has confused, intrigued and downright angered viewers for over a decade. We never seem to get any answers, but we do have some clues.

In this article, we piece together all of the various anecdotes, quotes and other information that we have in regards to the fishing trip. We also have an article that looks at the main theories to do with the fishing trip .

We first learn that there is a degree of beef in Season One, when Jason surprises everyone by coming home early from Spain, ahead of Gavin and Stacey’s wedding. The scene is joyous, until Bryn enters the room, when a deep and awkward silence hits.

As viewers, we are totally perplexed. Bryn retreats to the kitchen, resulting in Gwen going to see what is wrong with Bryn. Gwen mentions that Bryn and Jason “got on as good as gold” before the fishing trip. Ever since then, things have not been the same, and Bryn hasn’t ever told his closest confidente Gwen.

Bryn returns to the living room afterwards, and says a civil hello to Jason. You can see the scene below.

Later on in the season, we get our first details on what happens. At Gavin and Stacey’s wedding, Jason attempts to make peace with Bryn. Jason mentions that “it wasn’t a big deal. Lots of people do it, it’s not against the law”.

Bryn replies by saying “Jason please, how can I ever forget that look on your face”. Jason reassures Bryn that it is all going to be okay. That is all we get out of Season One.

We don’t hear too much about the fishing trip initially in Season Two. But the effects of the event are still very much felt, as we see in the famous episode where Bryn organises a surprise party for Gwen.

We see that Bryn still struggles, as Jason’s surprise appearance at the barn dance leads to an awkward silence. Bryn later tells Stacey that he wasn’t expecting Jason’s arrival, and that since he arrived, that he had heard the term “fishing trip” muttered four times.

The next development comes a couple episodes later, when we have a bombshell dropped on us. Bryn tells Jason that he told Dave Coaches about what had happened, at a time when Bryn was feeling especially low whilst playing mini golf.

Of course, Dave has now became a part of the family, leading to Bryn and Jason seeing him more regularly. Jason asked if Bryn had said “even about-“, which Bryn interrupted by saying “yes, everything”.

Bryn said that Dave was “sickened by the whole thing”. Jason said that what happened was “perfectly legal in this country.” Bryn asks Jason if he “ever thinks about it”, to which Jason nods, before exiting the room. You can see this scene below.

The Barry contingent head to bingo, which Dave drives the group to. At one point, the bingo caller calls out “down on your knees”, which results in Bryn, Jason and Dave making awkward eye contact.

In the final episode, Nessa enters labour, bringing the Barry and Billericay crew together. We see Bryn getting a soup from a vending machine, which Dave comments on. Bryn asks if Dave’s question has a deeper meaning.

Dave then states “I wish I didn’t know either, but I do. But it’s difficult for me as well, seeing you standing there with a soup like (sic). It sets my mind racing, you know?” Dave confirms that he hasn’t told anyone – stating that “even if I wanted to tell anyone, I wouldn’t know where to start because in my mind it’s a physical impossibility, it defies gravity”.

2008 Christmas Special

The next time that the fishing trip is mentioned is in the 2008 Christmas special, when Bryn and Jason attempt to bury the hatchet over a glass of Nesquik milkshake.

The fishing trip soon comes up, with Jason asking Bryn about whether or not Dave mentions it. Bryn says “there’s the occasional comment, the odd look. Times when I know that he’s wondering how a man and his nephew could…”, before Jason cuts him off.

Dave walks in on the two of them hugging. When Bryn starts to attempt to discuss “why” the events of the fishing trip happened, he said “it was freezing cold, it was, and when you are that cold…” – Gavin soon interrupts.

In Season 3, the fishing trip takes a backseat, only being mentioned once. It appears that now, Bryn and Jason have reconciled, and are on better terms.

When the Shipman and West families have a barbecue, they talk about living arrangements for the upcoming week, with Nessa and Dave’s wedding fast approaching. When Bryn mentions that Jason is to sleep in his house, Mick asks if everything is sorted between the two of them.

Another awkward silence ensues, before Bryn toasts the couple Nessa and Dave. That is the last we hear about the fishing trip for over a decade.

2019 Christmas Special

It seemed inevitable that the 2019 reunion special would breach the topic of the fishing trip, and indeed, it came up in conversation, with Gwen inadvertently giving Jason and Bryn a framed picture of the duo on the infamous fishing trip.

It appeared that all of our questions were to be finally answered, when Bryn said that it was time to talk about what happened on the fishing trip. But frustratingly, the children interrupted Bryn.

The only additional details we got were “it was very dark, in every sense of the word”. Jason added “And can I just point out that we knew nothing about camping”. Bryn also mentioned that whatever happened was his fault.

Once again, we were left with more questions than answers.

There are many theories that exist . We have put together an article looking at four of the most popular theories of what might have happened.

These theories revolve around either some form of sexual interaction between Bryn and Jason, a murder, Jason finding out something dark about Bryn, or maybe something very, very innocuous.

Read Now: What Happened on the Fishing Trip? 4 Possible Theories

The Takeaway

Whether or not we’ll ever get the full story is unknown. It isn’t clear if even show creators James Corden and Ruth Jones know what happened.

We hope that in the future, we will finally find out what happened. Though we aren’t expecting that we’ll ever get a definitive answer – sometimes these questions are best left to the imagination of viewers.

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The Mayday Call: How One Death at Sea Transformed a Fishing Fleet

The opioid epidemic has made a dangerous job even more deadly. And when there’s an overdose at sea, fishermen have to take care of one another.

Hollis Nevells aboard the Karen Nicole, a fishing vessel based in Massachusetts whose owner adopted a Narcan training program because of rising opioid overdoses in the industry. Credit... David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

Supported by

By C.J. Chivers

C.J. Chivers is a staff writer for the magazine. He reported from fishing ports in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Jersey for several months.

• June 6, 2024 Updated 11:48 a.m. ET

The call from the Atlantic Ocean sounded over VHF radio on a midsummer afternoon. “Mayday, mayday, mayday,” the transmission began, then addressed the nearest U.S. Coast Guard command center. “Sector Delaware Bay, this is the vessel Jersey Pride. Come in.”

Listen to this article, read by James Patrick Cronin

About 40 miles east-southeast of Barnegat Light, N.J., the Jersey Pride, a 116-foot fishing vessel with a distinctive royal blue hull, was towing a harvesting dredge through clam beds 20 fathoms down when its crew found a deckhand unresponsive in a bunk. The captain suspected an overdose. After trying to revive the man, he rushed to the radio. “Yes, Coast Guard, uh, I just tried to wake a guy up and he’s got black blood in his nose,” he said, sounding short of breath on Channel 16, the international hailing and distress frequency for vessels at sea. “I got guys working on him. Come in.”

The seas were gentle, the air hot. In cramped crew quarters in the forepeak, the deckhand, Brian Murphy, was warm but not breathing in a black tee and jeans. He had no discernible pulse. Dark fluid stained his nostrils. A marine welder and father of four, Murphy, 40, had been mostly unemployed for months, spending time caring for his children while his wife worked nights. A few days earlier, while he was on a brief welding gig to repair the Jersey Pride at its dock, the captain groused about being short-handed. Murphy agreed to fill in. Now it was July 20, 2021, the third day of the first commercial fishing trip of his life. Another somber sequence in the opioid epidemic was nearing its end.

“Captain,” a Coast Guard petty officer asked, “is there CPR in progress?”

“Yes, there is,” the captain replied.

About 17 miles to the Jersey Pride’s southeast, the fishing vessel Karen Nicole was hauling back its two scallop dredges and preparing to swing aboard its catch. Through the low rumble of the 78-foot boat’s diesel engine and the high whine of its winches, the mate, Hollis Nevells, listened to the conversation crackling over a wheelhouse radio. Nevells had lost a brother-in-law and about 15 peers to fatal overdoses. When the Jersey Pride’s captain broadcast details of his imperiled deckhand — “His last name is Murphy,” he said — Nevells understood what he heard in human terms. That’s someone’s son or brother, he thought.

Nevells knew the inventory of his own vessel’s trauma kit. It contained bandages, tape, tourniquets, splints, analgesics and balms, but no Narcan, the opioid antidote. Without it, there was little to do beyond hope the Jersey Pride’s captain would announce that the other deckhands successfully revived their co-worker. Only then, Nevells knew, would the Coast Guard send a helicopter.

Murphy remained without vital signs. His pupils, the captain told the Coast Guard, had dilated to “the size of the iris.” The Jersey Pride swung its bow shoreward toward the Manasquan River, where medical examiners would meet the boat at its dock. Another commercial fisherman was gone.

Since the opioid crisis hit the United States in the late 1990s, no community has been spared. First with prescription painkillers, then with heroin after tighter prescription rules pushed people dependent on opioids to underground markets, and more recently with illicitly manufactured fentanyl and its many analogues, the epidemic has killed roughly 800,000 people by overdose since 1999, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With fatalities averaging more than 80,000 a year for three years running, it is the nation’s leading cause of accidental death.

The death toll includes victims from all walks of life, but multiple studies illuminate how fatalities cluster along occupational lines. A 2022 report by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health noted that employees in fishing, forestry, agriculture and hunting had the highest rates of all industries, closely followed by workers in construction trades. The news affirmed what was visible on these jobs. Federal data had long established that such workers — at risk from falls, equipment mishaps or drowning — were the most likely to die in workplace accidents in the United States. Now opioids stalked their ranks disproportionately, too.

In fishing fleets, the reasons are many and clear. First is the grueling nature of the job. “The fishing industry and the relationship to substance use is the story of pain, mental and physical pain, and the lack of access to support,” says J.J. Bartlett, president and founder of Fishing Partnership Support Services, a nonprofit that provides free safety training to fishing communities in the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic.

The risk is also rooted in how fishery employment is organized. Crew members on fishing vessels are typically independent contractors paid a fraction of the profit (a “share,” in industry jargon) after each trip. They generally lack benefits or support common to full-time employment on land, including health insurance, paid sick time and access to human-resource departments or unions. Physical conditions factor in, too. Offshore fishing boats tend to operate ceaselessly. Captains divide crew work into long, overlapping watches that offer little sleep and require arduous labor on slick, pitching decks, sometimes in extreme weather. The work can assume an ultramarathon character. When a valuable catch is running, as squid do in summer south of Nantucket, many boats will fill holds or freezers over several days, return to port to offload, then immediately take on food, fuel and ice and head back out, a practice known as “turn and burn” that can leave crews haggard. Stress, pain and injuries are inherent in such circumstances, including common musculoskeletal injuries and, on scallop vessels, an unusual and excruciating affliction known as “the grip” — caused by constant shucking — that can make hands curl and seize up for days. No matter the suffering, deckhands are expected to keep pace. Those who can are rewarded with checks, sometimes large checks, and respect, an intangible more elusive than wealth. Those who can’t are not invited back.

Its hardships notwithstanding, the industry is a reservoir of human drive and ocean-roaming talent, providing good wages and meaningful work to the independent-minded, the rugged, the nomadic and the traditionally inclined, along with immigrants and people with criminal records or powerful allergies to the stultifying confines of office life. On the water, pedigree and background checks mean little. Reputation is all. In this way, the vessels preserve a professional culture as old as human civilization and bring to shore immense amounts of healthful food, for which everyone is paid by the pound, not by the hour.

Taken together, these circumstances pressure deckhands to work through fatigue, ailments and injuries. One means is via stimulants or painkillers, or both, making it no surprise that in the fentanyl era fishing crews suffer rates of fatal overdose up to five times that of the general population. “This is an unaddressed public-health crisis,” Bartlett says, “for workers without a safety net.”

Commercial fishing in the United States also operates in a gap in the legal framework governing other industries running vessels at sea. The federal regulations mandating drug-testing for mariners on vessels in commercial service — including ferries, tugs and cargo ships as well as research and charter boats — exempt all fishing boats except the very largest. Some companies screen anyhow. But with no legal requirement, captains and crews are generally tested only after a serious incident, like a sinking, collision or death on deck. Toxicology tests are also performed on fishermen’s corpses, when the authorities manage to recover them. “We always find out too late,” says Jason D. Neubauer, deputy chief of the Coast Guard’s Office of Investigations & Casualty Analysis. One of Neubauer’s uncles, a lumberjack, was addicted to heroin for decades. “I take this personally every time I see a mariner dying from drugs,” he says, “because I have seen the struggle.”

None of these employment factors are new. Working fishermen have always faced pain, exhaustion and incentives to work through both. (A weeklong trip aboard a scalloper, among the most remunerative fishing jobs, can pay $10,000 or more — a check no deckhand wants to miss.) Heroin, cocaine and amphetamines were common in ports a generation ago. Veteran captains say drug use was much more widespread then, before smaller catch limits and tighter regulations forced the industry to trim fleets and sometimes the size of crews. Contraction, employers say, compelled vessels to hire more selectively, reducing the presence of illicit drugs.

If use is down, potency is up. Much of the increased danger is because of fentanyl, which the Drug Enforcement Administration considers 50 times stronger than heroin. Fentanyl suppresses respiration and can kill quickly, challenging the industry’s spirit of self-reliance. When offshore, laboring between heaving seas and endless sky, fishermen cook for themselves, repair damaged equipment themselves and rely on one another for first aid. Everything depends on a few sets of able hands. Barring calamity, there exists no expectation of further help. The ethos — simultaneously celebrated and unsettling — is largely the same over the horizon off the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts, in fisheries bringing billions of pounds of seafood to consumers each year. When the severity of an ailment or injury is beyond what crews can manage alone, a baked-in math restricts access to trauma care. Fishing vessels routinely operate eight hours or more from land, putting employees in circumstances utterly different from those of most workers in the United States, where response times for E.M.T.s are measured in minutes. The Coast Guard runs a highly regarded search-and-rescue service, but when a vessel’s location is remote or a storm howling, Coast Guard aircraft might require hours to arrive. Urgency does not eliminate distance and weather. A fentanyl overdose can kill in minutes, a timeline no Coast Guard asset can beat.

As the epidemic has claimed crew member after crew member, the death toll has been behind a push to bring harm-reduction strategies out onto the ocean. Chief among them are efforts to train crews to identify and treat an overdose and a push to saturate fleets with naloxone, the opioid antagonist, commonly administered as a nasal spray under the trade name Narcan, that can reverse overdoses and retrieve a fading patient from a mortal slide. The initiatives have made some inroads. But in a proud industry where names are made on punishing work and high-seas savvy, naloxone distribution has also faced resistance from vessel owners or captains concerned about the message carrying Narcan might send. Where proponents have succeeded, they have done so in part by demonstrating that harm reduction isn’t an abdication of fishermen’s responsibility — but a natural extension of it.

Before venturing into commercial fishing, Brian Murphy endured a run of difficult years. He separated from his wife in 2015 and moved to Florida, where he found, then lost, employment before running low on cash during the pandemic. He returned in late 2020 to his wife’s home in Vineland, reuniting their children with both parents and putting himself within an hour or so of commercial fishing docks along the shore. He hoped to find work welding for the fleet as he co-parented and put his life in order. “He was getting there,” his wife, Christina, says. “All he needed was a job.”

The deckhand position looked like the break he sought. It paid roughly $1,000 for three days at sea. The captain, Rodney Bart, seemed more than accommodating. Though he lived about 70 miles away, he agreed to pick up Murphy before the trip. Murphy told his wife he might put his wages toward a car, which could help him find a land job. Christina had reservations. She had heard stories of captains’ working crews past exhaustion and tolerating drugs on board. But she understood that her husband needed work. The back of his neck bore a small tattoo of the letter M adorned with a crown. “King Murph,” he called himself. He longed for that old stride.

What his family did not know was that the Jersey Pride, a boat that formerly enjoyed an excellent reputation, was in decline. Its hull and bulkheads were thick with rust. Its big gray-bearded captain, Bart, struggled with addiction to opioids and meth. A friend warned Murphy the vessel was “bad news,” says Murphy’s father, Brian Haferl. Murphy took the job anyhow.

On July 17, 2021, the evening before Murphy departed, he stayed up playing Call of Duty with a younger brother, Doug Haferl. Christina worked the night shift at a trucking firm. She returned home in the darkness and gave Brian a bag of bedding and clean clothes. When Bart showed up before dawn, Murphy dipped into the bedroom to say goodbye. Christina shared what cash she had — about $15 — to put toward cigarettes. “I didn’t have much else to give him,” she says. Then her husband left, off to make a check.

For two days Christina wondered how Brian was doing and whether he was getting sleep. I hope that blanket was enough, she thought. On the third day, a friend from a boatyard called. He said that Murphy was unconscious on the boat and that the Coast Guard might be flying out to help. Christina chose hope. “I figured they’d probably get the helicopter out there and revive him,” she says. About a half-hour later, a Coast Guard captain arrived at her home to inform her Brian was dead.

The captain shared what investigators gleaned at the dock: Murphy hurt his back, was pacing back and forth and had been in an argument with another deckhand. He got into a bunk to rest, and was soon found lifeless. “They just said he was acting really weird,” she says. The Coast Guard captain also said a small plastic bag had been found with him that appeared to contain drug residue. Christina was suspicious. Her husband had no money to buy drugs, and though he occasionally used Percocet pills and meth in the past, had not been using since returning home.

The same night, a police officer called Murphy’s father to notify him. Haferl was enraged. He told the officer that someone on the vessel must have given his son drugs and that he was heading to the dock with a rifle. “The guys on that boat better duck,” he said. The officer advised against this. If he caused a disturbance boatside, Haferl recalls him saying, “We’re going to be fishing you out of the river.”

Haferl could not rush to the Jersey Pride anyhow. Fishermen are paid by what they catch. Once medical examiners took custody of Murphy’s body, the vessel slipped back out the inlet to continue clamming. Murphy had boarded the boat with a duffel from home. He was carried off in jeans, socks and a T-shirt. Not even his shoes came back. When the Jersey Pride completed its trip, his family started calling Bart, the captain, seeking answers and Brian’s personal effects. Bart did not return calls. Neither did the owner, Doug Stocker. Eventually, Christina said, the friend from the boatyard dropped off her husband’s wallet and a phone. Both were sealed in plastic bags. Silence draped over the case. “No one was telling anyone anything,” Murphy’s father said.

Stocker, the Jersey Pride’s owner, relieved Bart of his position in fall 2021, then died that December. Bart died in 2023. Murphy’s family learned little beyond the contents of the autopsy report from the Ocean County Medical Examiner’s office. Its toxicology results were definitive. They showed the presence of fentanyl, methamphetamine and the animal tranquilizer xylazine in Murphy’s cardiac blood, leading the examiner to rule his death a result of “acute toxic effects” of three drugs. (Xylazine is another recent adulterant in black-market drug supplies.)

The report also revealed a surprise: Murphy’s blood contained traces of naloxone. Why he died nonetheless raised more unanswered questions. There were possible explanations. The crew may have administered naloxone perimortem, at the moment of death, too late to save his life but in time to show up in his blood. Alternately, the fentanyl may have been too potent for the amount of naloxone on board and failed to revive Murphy at all. A more disturbing possibility, which suggested a potential lapse in training, was that after Murphy received Narcan, Bart opted to let him rest and recover, and either the naloxone wore off or the other drugs proved lethal without intervention.

The last possibility was both maddening to consider and hard to fathom, given Bart’s personal experience with the sorrows of the epidemic. His adult daughter, Maureen, became dependent on prescription painkillers after a hip injury, completed rehab and relapsed fatally in 2018. Wracked with grief, Bart, who in 2017 completed an outpatient detox program for his own addiction, resumed use, one relative said. In March 2018 he overdosed aboard the Jersey Pride while it was alongside an Atlantic City dock. Narcan saved the captain that day. His pain deepened. His son, Rodney Bart Jr., followed him into clamming as a teenager and rose to become a mate on another clamming vessel, the John N. In 2020, about a year before Murphy died, Bart’s son fatally overdosed on fentanyl and heroin while towing a dredge off the Jersey Shore.

A federal wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Rodney Jr.’s family in early 2023 sketched a work force in addiction’s grip. It claimed that for more than six months before Rodney Jr.’s overdose, he complained that “the entire crew including the captain were using heroin during fishing operations”; that the captain supplied heroin to the crew, including to Rodney Jr.; that another crew member almost died by overdose on board in 2019; that Rodney Jr. nearly stepped on a needle on the boat; and that he saw “the captain nodded out” in the wheelhouse several times. Immediately after Rodney Jr.’s death, the suit claimed, the captain discussed with the crew “fabricating a story to the United States Coast Guard that decedent had died at the dock.” That night, the suit claimed, the captain falsely told the authorities that Rodney Jr. suffered a heart attack.

The parties settled early this year for an undisclosed sum. In telephone interviews, an owner of the vessel, John Kelleher, said he had zero tolerance for drug use and was not aware his crew was injecting heroin. After the death, he said, “I fired everybody that was on that boat.” Kelleher’s vessels now carry Narcan, though he was ambivalent about its presence. “It says it’s OK to have a heroin addict on the boat?” he asked. “I don’t want to promote that on the boat. We owe millions of dollars to the bank. You can’t have crews out there to catch clams driving around in circles.”

Hours after Murphy died, the Karen Nicole’s mate, Hollis Nevells, used a satellite phone to call his wife, Stacy Alexander-Nevells, in Fairhaven, Mass. The Karen Nicole is part of a large family-run enterprise in greater New Bedford, the most lucrative fishing port in the United States. Alexander-Nevells, a daughter of the business’s founder, grew up in commercial fishing. She sensed something was wrong. “Is everyone OK?” she asked.

“I just heard someone die on the radio,” Nevells said. “It was so close, so close, and I couldn’t help.”

Hearing strain in his voice, Alexander-Nevells was swept with pain. Her brother Warren Jr., a shore worker in the family business, died of a prescription-opioid overdose in 2009. She lived quietly in that shadow. Thinking of Murphy’s fellow crew members, and of other boats listening as the captain publicly broadcast Murphy’s deathbed symptoms, she felt an inner wall fall. “That was the first time I started processing how far-reaching one death could be, especially a preventable one,” she says. “For days I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”

In a conversation with a girlfriend, her friend mentioned Narcan. Alexander-Nevells knew of the drug, but thought of it as something administered only by emergency medical workers. That was no longer true. In 2018 Massachusetts authorized pharmacies to dispense Narcan without a prescription to opioid users, their families and “persons in a position to assist individuals at risk of experiencing an opioid-related overdose.” The Alexander fleet, employing more than 100 people in a high-risk industry, qualified. (Last year the Food and Drug Administration approved Narcan for over-the-counter sales, removing more barriers to distribution.) Had the Karen Nicole carried naloxone, Alexander-Nevells thought, Murphy might still be alive. Still she balked. She realized she knew almost nothing about the drug. “I didn’t know dose,” she says. “I didn’t know how to use it.”

All around the harbor there were signs of need. For as long as any commercial fisherman could remember, greater New Bedford suffered from widespread substance use. Before recent pockets of shoreline gentrification appeared, some of the city’s former bars, notably the National Club, were the stuff of coastal legend. Older fishermen say there was little in the 1990s like the National during nor’easters and hurricanes, when scores of boats lashed together in port, rain and gales blasted the streets and crews rode out the weather at the bar. Booze flowed. Drugs were easy to find. And fishermen between trips often had wads of cash. “We were basically pirates back then,” one older scalloper says. “The way we lived, the way we fished. It was a free-for-all.” The scalloper, later incarcerated in Maine for heroin possession, says he stopped using opioids before fentanyl tainted the heroin supply. “I got out just in time,” he says. “It’s the only reason I’m still alive.” (His girlfriend’s son, a young fisherman, overdosed fatally the week before; to protect his household’s privacy, he asked that his name be withheld.) Capt. Clint Prindle, who commands the Coast Guard sector in southeastern New England, also recalls the era. As a young officer he was stationed in New Bedford on the cutter Campbell. The tour, he says, “was the only time in my career I was issued puncture-resistant gloves” — a precaution against loose syringes on fishing vessels.

For all these stories, the fishing industry was hardly the sole driver of the city’s underground trade, and drug use there remains widespread independent of the fleet. An investigation by The New Bedford Light, a nonprofit news site, found that one in every 1,250 city residents died of an overdose in 2022, more than twice the rate statewide. (Nationally, about one in 4,070 people died of opioid overdoses in 2022.) The report also found that about one out of eight New Bedford residents had enrolled in drug- or alcohol-addiction treatment since 2012. Such data aligns with the experience of Tyler Miranda, a scallop-vessel captain who grew up in the city. “The people who had money were drug dealers or fishermen,” he says. “When I was young, I knew a few fishermen, but most of my friends were in the other business.” These conditions helped make overdoses part of the local medical routine, prompting the city, with help from organizations like Fishing Partnership, to distribute free Narcan.

The movement has still not been fully embraced. A survey of commercial fishing captains published last year in The American Journal of Industrial Medicine suggested that skepticism about stocking Narcan persisted. Of 61 captains, 10 had undergone naloxone training, and only five said their vessels carried the drug. The survey’s data ended in 2020, and Fishing Partnership says the numbers have risen. Since 2016, the partnership’s opioid-education and Narcan-distribution program has trained about 2,500 people in the industry from Maine to North Carolina, about 80 percent of them in the last three years, says Dan Orchard, the partnership’s executive vice president. But with resistance lingering, Alexander-Nevells was unsure whether she could get Narcan on her family’s fleet. That would depend on her father, Warren J. Alexander.

Alexander is a tall, reserved man with neatly combed white hair who entered commercial fishing in the 1960s at age 13 by packing herring on weekends at Cape May. As a young man he lobstered, potted sea bass and worked on trawlers and clammers before setting out on his own with the purchase of a decades-old wooden schooner. The boat sank near Cape May while returning in a storm; Alexander tells the story of hearing its propeller still turning as he treaded water above the descending hull. Undeterred, he gambled big, having steel clamming vessels built in shipyards in the Gulf of Mexico and bringing them north. By the 1990s he was one of New Jersey’s most successful clam harvesters, and odds were good that any can of clam chowder in the United States contained shellfish scraped from the sea floor by an Alexander dredge. He moved the business to New England in 1993, weathering two more sinkings and a pair of fatal accidents as it continued to grow. In the ensuing years, he left clamming and largely switched to scalloping, and now owns more than 20 steel vessels, which he watches over from a waterfront warehouse, greeting captains and crews with the soft-spoken self-assurance of a man who has seen it all.

His daughter knew him as more than a fleet manager. He was a father who lost his son, Warren Jr., to opioids. He lived the torturous contours of the epidemic firsthand. She pitched her idea with shared loss in mind. Warren listened and ruled. “I’m not going to mandate it,” he said. “But if you can get captains to agree to it, you can give it a try.”

The Fishing Partnership’s program to put naloxone on boats and provide crews with overdose first-aid training began after Debra Kelsey, a community health worker, met a grieving fisherman at an event of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association in 2015. The man’s son fatally overdosed about six months before. “He told me his ex-wife had been instrumental in getting Narcan into the hands of the police in Quincy, where he was from,” she says. Kelsey was intrigued — first by the lifesaving value of naloxone, but also by who was trained and designated to carry it.

She lived with a fisherman. She knew the industry and admired its inviolable code: Out on the ocean, fishing boats rushed to help each other. Whether flooding, fire or medical emergency, they came to one another’s aid, and in many cases were first on the scene. “In a mayday call,” she says, “a fishing vessel will often get there before the Coast Guard.” In the particular conditions of work on the water, fishermen functioned as first responders. Kelsey wondered if this ancient trait could be harnessed to save lives in new ways. Naloxone dispensers felt like a suddenly necessary component in vessel safety kits — just like fire extinguishers and throwable lifesaving rings.

In 2017, in part at her urging, Fishing Partnership introduced overdose education and naloxone distribution into the free first-aid classes it offered to captains and crews. Buoyed by a federal grant to New Bedford, the program expanded in 2019 and found an ally in the Coast Guard, which often hosted the partnership’s training sessions at its stations in fishing ports. Its officers echoed Kelsey’s view that naloxone dispensers had become essential onboard equipment.

Naloxone still faced barriers, often from fishermen themselves. Many captains insisted that they forbade illicit drugs and that carrying naloxone functioned as a hypocritical wink, a suggestion that drugs were allowed. Stigma, too, played a role. “People were like, ‘These fishermen are drunks, they’re addicts, they’re living the wild life,’” Kelsey says. She disagreed — addiction isn’t a moral failure, she’d say, it’s a disease — and pressed her message. Stocking naloxone did not mean condoning drug use. It meant a vessel was more fully aligned with the mariner’s code.

Stigma was not the only obstacle. Fear played a role as well. The Coast Guard, for all its support, is a complicated harm-reduction partner. It operates as both a rescue and law-enforcement agency, which leaves many fishermen with a split-screen perception of the organization — appreciating the former role while bristling at the latter. Worries about inviting police action on a boat already dealing with a crew member down make some captains reluctant to report drug-related medical issues, says Captain Prindle, the service’s sector commander. “Often we’ll get a case where the master of a vessel reports they have a cardiac issue or shortness of breath or anxiety issues,” he says. “They leave out the opioids piece.”

Upon returning to the region in 2021, Prindle began attending the partnership’s Narcan training sessions, at which he assured attendees that if they made a mayday call for an overdose, Coast Guard teams would focus on saving a mariner’s life, not on searching for contraband. His message aligned with the experience of service members who patrol the waters. “I don’t think any of us on this boat, when we have an opioid overdose to deal with, want to arrest anybody,” says Petty Officer Third Class Justus Christopher, who runs a 47-foot motor lifeboat out of Martha’s Vineyard. Christopher recalls a vessel with a deckhand in withdrawal. “We got a call that a guy was afraid for his life, and it was a guy dopesick in his bunk,” he says. Other crew members, seething that the deckhand stopped working for his share, were hazing him. Someone defecated in his hat, Christopher said, and smeared Icy Hot in his bedding. The boarding team removed the man. “It never went through our minds to search the boat for drugs,” Christopher said.

With naloxone now available, converts to harm reduction are becoming plentiful around ports. Nuno Lemos, 50, a deckhand in his eighth year of abstinence, moved to New Bedford from Portugal as a teenager. While in high school he did his first commercial trip, working on a trawler and earning $1,200 in five days. On some boats back then, he said, captains dispensed stimulants and painkillers as performance enhancers. His use grew heavy. Between fishing trips, he smoked crack for days, then snorted heroin to come down. “Chasing the dragon,” he says. The habit consumed his income, so he supplemented wages by pinching cash from fellow deckhands’ wallets and hiding fish and scallops under ice below deck, then retrieving the stolen product at the dock for black-market wholesalers. His professional reputation plummeted. He spiraled at home too. Lemos had a son with a woman also battling addiction. In no condition to raise their child, they both lost access to the boy. Her parents took over his care. “I was selfish and self-centered,” he says. “The drugs ran the show.”

In 2016, Lemos hit bottom. He walked off a fishing boat that was laid up in Provincetown during a storm and binge-drank for hours, then burglarized a home to fund a bus ride back to New Bedford. That afternoon he took refuge in the unfinished basement of a bakery and injected what he thought was heroin. He collapsed. His mother, who rented an apartment upstairs, summoned paramedics, who reversed the overdose with naloxone. Lemos shrugged off his brush with death. “I was in the hospital for a few hours, and I got high right after,” he says. But the experience left its impression. He got his hands on Narcan and kept two other people alive. One was a fisherman named Mario, the other “a kid on Rivet Street,” he says, whom he barely knew. Later that year, ashamed and worried he would die without knowing his son, he checked into rehab. Months later he resumed work, first hanging drywall, then back on scalloper decks. As his sobriety lasted, he reunited with his son. His praise of naloxone now borders on liturgy. “Narcan is a God-given thing that should be part of everybody’s training, especially in the business that I am in,” he says. “It’s a pivotal tool of survival that should be on every boat.”

Another fisherman, Justin Souza, 38, started fishing at age 20 and soon was taking opioid pills to manage pain. He moved to heroin when OxyContin became scarce on the streets. When fentanyl entered underground markets, he says, it started killing his friends, ultimately claiming about 20 people he knew, a half-dozen of them fishermen. His first encounter with naloxone was jarringly personal: He was in an apartment with a friend who slipped into unconsciousness and was gargling for breath. “My buddy was dying, and I had a bag of drugs,” he said. “It was either call 911 or my buddy is dead. So I called 911, hid the stuff, and they came and hit him with Narcan.” The man survived. Souza was arrested on an unrelated possession charge in 2017. In jail he changed course. “I cried out to Jesus,” he said, “and he showed up.”

Upon release he entered treatment and has been abstinent since, for which he credits God. Reliable again, Souza was hired by Tyler Miranda, captain of the scallop vessel Mirage, who promoted him to engineer, the crew member responsible for maintaining the boat’s winches and power plant. The Mirage’s crew is a testament to the power of redemption. Once addicted to opioids himself, Miranda has abstained since 2017. He became captain two years into his sobriety, and stocked naloxone onboard shortly after.

Eight days after Brian Murphy died, Kelsey and a co-worker showed up at the Ocean Wave, one of Alexander’s scallopers, to train its crew. The instructors mixed demonstrations on how to administer Narcan — one spray into one nostril, the second into the other — with assurances that the drug was harmless if used on someone suffering a condition other than overdose. The training carried another message, which was not intuitive: Merely administering Narcan was not enough. Multiple dispensers were sometimes required to restore a patient’s breathing, and this was true even if a patient resumed seemingly normal respiration. If the opioids were particularly potent, a patient might backslide as the antagonist wore off. Patients in respiratory distress also often suffered “polysubstance overdoses,” like fentanyl mixed with other drugs, including cocaine, amphetamines or xylazine. Alcohol might be involved, too. With so many variables, anyone revived with naloxone should be rushed to professional care. In an overdose at sea, they said, a victim’s peers should make a mayday call, so the Coast Guard could hurry the patient to a hospital.

After the partnership trained two more Alexander crews, Warren heard positive feedback from his captains. He issued his judgment. “Now it’s mandatory,” he said. Within weeks of the Jersey Pride’s mayday call, Narcan distribution and training became permanent elements of the company’s operation. Alexander-Nevells credits Murphy. He spent about 72 hours as a commercial fisherman, died on the job and left a legacy. “He changed my dad’s fleet,” she says. “I know for a fact that without Brian Murphy, this program doesn’t exist.”

In New Jersey, where Murphy’s family suffered the agonies of sudden, unexpected loss, followed by the humiliation of being ghosted by those who knew what happened to him aboard the Jersey Pride, the changes to the Alexander fleet came as welcome news. His brother, Doug Haferl, recalls his sibling with warmth and gratitude. Their parents divorced when the kids were young, and their father worked long hours as a crane operator. Brian assumed the role of father figure. “He took me and my brother Tom under his wing,” he says. The thought that Brian’s death helped put naloxone on boats and might one day save a life, he says, “is about the best thing I could hope for.”

Deckhands and captains come and go. Naloxone dispensers expire. To keep the fleet current, Alexander-Nevells booked refresher training throughout 2023 and into 2024. At one class, Kelsey met the Karen Nicole’s captain and five-person crew. The group gathered in the galley. Everyone present had lost friends. Kelsey recited symptoms. “If someone overdoses,” she said, “they will make a noise — ”

“It’s a gargle,” said Myles Jones, a deckhand. “I know what it is.”

He stood by a freezer, a compact, muscular man in a white sleeveless tee. “I’ve lost a son,” he said. The room fell still.

“I’m sorry,” Kelsey said. She stepped across the galley and wrapped him in a hug. Jones managed a pained smile. “I lost an uncle, too,” he said.

Kelsey continued the class, then examined the Narcan aboard to ensure it had not expired. The boat headed to sea.

In the wheelhouse, the mate, Hollis Nevells, said that Narcan fit a mentality fishing jobs require. He shared a story of a drunk fisherman who crashed a house party years ago in his hometown on Deer Isle, Maine. To prevent him from driving his pickup truck, other guests took his keys and stashed them atop a refrigerator. Furious, the man produced a pistol, pointed it at Nevells’s face and demanded the keys’ return. Thus persuaded, Nevells retrieved them. The man drove away only to call a short while later, upset. His truck was stuck in mud. He wanted help. Several fishermen drove to him, separated him from the pistol and beat the truck with baseball bats until it was totaled. “Island justice,” Nevells said. In his view, carrying Narcan matched this rough, self-help spirit: On the ocean, crews needed to solve problems themselves, and with Narcan came the power to save a life. Nevells had lost many peers to overdoses, among them the man who leveled the pistol at his face. He remembered feeling helpless as the Jersey Pride broadcast graphic descriptions at the hour of Murphy’s death. He did not want to feel that way again.

The captain, Duane Natale, agreed. He had seen firsthand how delaying death bought time for a rescue. Scallopers tow massive steel dredges that cut furrows through the ocean bottom and snatch scallops along the way. By winch and boom, the dredges are periodically lifted above deck to shake out catch, then lowered again. The procedure is exceptionally dangerous. A swinging dredge, about 15 feet wide and weighing more than a ton, can crush a man in one sickening crunch. In the 1990s, Natale saw a falling dredge shear off a deckhand’s extended right arm. A makeshift tourniquet tightened around the stump kept the man alive until a helicopter lifted him away. Had they not been trained, the deckhand would have died. Natale saw a similar role for Narcan: a means to stop a fatality and let the Coast Guard do its work. “I like it a lot,” he said. “Last thing I want on my conscience is someone dying on my boat.”

In water 45 fathoms deep the boat steamed at 4.8 knots, towing dredges through sandy muck while the crew sweated through an incessant loop. From a hydraulic control station at the wheelhouse’s aft end, Nevells or Natale periodically hoisted the dredges and shook out tons of scallops, which slid out onto the steel deck in rumbling cascades of pink-and-white shells. Working fast, Hollis and the deckhands shoveled the catch into baskets and hustled it to sheltered cutting stations, where with stainless-steel knives they separated each scallop’s adductor muscle — the portion that makes its way to seafood cases and restaurant plates — from its gob of guts. Hands worked fast, flicking adductors into buckets and guts down chutes that plopped them onto greenish water beside the hull. Large sharks swam lazy circles alongside, turning to flash pale undersides while inhaling easy meals. Music thumped and blared: metal one hour, techno the next. When enough buckets were full of meat and rinsed in saltwater, two deckhands transferred the glistening, ivory-colored catch into roughly 50-pound cloth sacks, handed them down a hatch into the cool fish-hold and buried them beneath ice. Everyone else kept shucking.

The deckhands worked in staggered pairs: 11 hours of shoveling and shucking followed by four hours to shower, eat, sleep and bandage hands, then back on deck for 11 more hours. It continued for days. Daylight became dusk; dusk became night; night became dawn. Sea states changed. Fog and mist soaked the crew and shrouded the vessel, then lifted, revealing other boats on the horizon doing the same thing. The work never stopped. As exhaustion set in, people swayed where they stood, still hauling heavy baskets and shucking. To stay awake they downed coffee and Red Bull, smoked cigarettes and spoke little. One man wore a T-shirt stenciled with a solitary word. It read as both a personal statement and command to everyone else: Grind. Early on the fifth day, the Karen Nicole reached its 12,000-pound federal trip limit. Natale turned the boat toward New Bedford, almost a 24-hour steam away, and cooked everyone a rib-eye steak. The crew showered, ate and slept a few hours, then woke to scrub the boat. On shore two days later, each deckhand received his share: $9,090.61.

Within a year of its mayday call, the Jersey Pride entered a transformation. After the death in 2021 of the vessel’s owner, Doug Stocker, the boat passed to the family of his brother, Clint. A recently retired detective sergeant from the Middle Township Police Department, Clint Stocker was not affiliated with the Jersey Pride when Rodney Bart was its captain, and he knew little of what happened to Murphy, whom he never met. His view on opioid use was clear. “I tolerate none of that,” he says. He also needed no introduction to Narcan, having administered it as a police officer. The boat carries dispensers, he says, “just in case.”

In the midnight blackness this spring after the Jersey Pride returned to port, the vessel’s mate and deckhands described a job-site turnaround. The mate, Justin Puglisi, joined the crew about two months after Murphy’s death. His personal history in commercial fishing began with a loss that resonated through the industry: His father was taken by the sea with the vessel Beth Dee Bob, one of four clam boats that went to the bottom over 13 days in 1999, killing 10 fishermen. As a teenager Puglisi claimed his place in the surviving fleet. The Jersey Pride, he said, was in rough shape when he signed on. The bunk where Murphy overdosed remained unoccupied, the subject of vague stories about a deckhand’s death. Rodney Bart, still the captain, was using fentanyl onboard. “It was blatant,” Puglisi said. “He was leaving empty bags in the wheelhouse.” Two deckhands were heavy users, too. One wandered the boat with a syringe behind his ear. Puglisi had slipped into addiction himself. He was 32, had been using opioids for 15 years and was regularly buying and snorting fentanyl and crystal meth, which he bought in bulk. “I started with pills like everyone else, then switched to the cheaper stuff,” he said.

Bart was fired in fall 2021. But it was after Clint Stocker’s family took over that the operation markedly changed. Clint and his son Craig, who managed the boat’s maintenance, hired new crew members, invested in new electronics and implemented a schedule that gave crew members a week off work after two weeks onboard. They replaced the outriggers and eventually had the boat’s twin diesel engines rebuilt. Puglisi stood at a wheelhouse window. Around him were signs of attentive upkeep: new hoses, valves and a hydraulic pump; fresh upholstery on the wheelhouse bench; a new computer monitor connected to a satellite navigation system. The owners planned to repaint the boat, Puglisi said, but focused on more important maintenance first. “They put their money where it matters,” he said.

The overhaul was more than mechanical. In summer 2022, Puglisi fell asleep in the galley after getting high. When the Stockers heard, they helped find him a bed at rehab for six weeks, then gave him time to attend 90 Narcotics Anonymous meetings in 90 days. “They were like, ‘Go, and your job will be here when you get back,’” he said. When he returned, they put him straight to work. “It was all business,” Puglisi said. He rolled up his left sleeve to reveal a forearm tattoo — “One day at a time,” it read — and described the Jersey Pride as a good boat and fine workplace, unlike when Murphy was invited aboard. “I’ve worked for a lot of owners,” he said, “and this is the best boat I have been on. They take care of their crew.”

It was 1 a.m. A cold April wind blew hard from the northeast. Below Puglisi, three deckhands labored methodically under spotlights to offload catch. One, Bill Lapworth, was a former opioid user also in recovery now. His story matched countless others: He started with pills for pain relief, switched to heroin when the pills became harder to find and almost died when fentanyl poisoned the supply. He was revived by Narcan twice: first by E.M.T.s in an apartment, then by a friend as he slumped near death in a pickup truck. His friend had picked up free Narcan through a community handout program. Smoking a cigarette in the gusts as a crane swung metal cages of ocean quahogs overhead, Lapworth flashed the mischievous grin of a man pulled from the grave not once but twice, then offered a three-word endorsement of the little plastic dispensers to which he owed his life: “I got saved.”

Read by James Patrick Cronin

Audio produced by Elena Hecht

Narration produced by Anna Diamond

Engineered by Quinton Kamara

C.J. Chivers is a staff writer for the magazine and the author of two books, including “The Fighters: Americans in Combat in Afghanistan and Iraq.” He won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2017 for a profile of a former Marine with PTSD. David Guttenfelder is a photojournalist focusing on geopolitical conflict and conservation.

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