Deadliest Catch's Jake Anderson Calls It Quits After 13 Years of Marriage

When you’re gone most of the year chasing crab in the Bering Sea, it’s hard to hold down a marriage on land. That’s the reality Jake Anderson is facing as he opens up about his split from wife Jenna in the upcoming season 22 premiere of Deadliest Catch.

The 45-year-old fishing veteran, who’s been a fixture on the reality show since 2007, didn’t shy away from the truth during the episode airing on Discovery Channel Friday, May 8. After 17 years together and 13 years of marriage, he and Jenna decided to end things. The two had been separated for eight months at the time of filming last fall 2025.“It’s due to a lot of things. The major one is that I’m gone too much crab fishing,”Jake confessed to cameras.“But I got three little ones that need to eat, that have to go to school, that have to have doctor’s appointments, and I don’t have a job.”

It’s the kind of brutal honesty that hits different when you’re watching someone navigate the collision between ambition and family. Jake and Jenna met back in 2009 at a festival in Seattle when her family asked for his autograph. He signed it with“You’re beautiful”and the rest, as they say, is history—at least for 17 years. They tied the knot in 2012 and went on to have three kids: sons Aiden, 11, and Luka, 6, and daughter Cadence, 8. Over the years, Jenna rarely appeared on Jake’s social media, keeping her distance from the public eye even as her husband’s face became synonymous with one of TV’s grittiest shows.

The personal fallout isn’t Jake’s only headache heading into the new season. His attorney raised serious concerns about his ownership stake in the Titan Explorer, warning him against putting more money into the vessel during divorce proceedings. So he’s taking over the helm of the Cornelia Marie, the legendary boat once captained by Phil Harris. It’s full circle in a way—Jake worked on that very boat years ago when he was young and freshly smitten with Jenna.“Life was hard for me,”he reflected to the cameras about those early days. Now, at 45, he’s facing a different kind of hard—trying to keep his fishing career afloat while managing three kids and a dissolved marriage.

It’s a reminder that the adventure and paycheck that come with being on Deadliest Catch come at a cost that spreadsheets can’t measure. For Jake, that cost just became deeply personal.