Elliott Neese Surrenders Role As Captain Of F/V Saga: ‘Deadliest Catch’ Star Hand Reins Over To First Mate [Video]

On Tuesday night’s episode of Deadliest Catch, Elliott Neese gave up his role as S/V Saga’s captain to his first mate. Neese, not one of the audience’s favorite crab fisherman on the show, turned the reins over to Jeff Folk when he couldn’t drive the boat any longer.

“You have to drive the rest of the trip,” Elliott says to Folk. “I can’t drive the boat anymore.”

He then says he’s not going to say another word in front of the camera. Neese said he didn’t want that portion aired on television, but that wasn’t about to happen despite what the troubled captain demanded from the camera crew.

Folk relieved Neese, saying he figured Elliott wasn’t feeling too well mentally and wasn’t up to handling the boat in bad weather. On the Deadliest Catch episode that just aired, Folk and Elliott’s dad were talking about the embattled captain and how drugs have taken its toll on him overall.

Things got heated when Elliott began throwing water at the wheelhouse because he was mad Folk couldn’t find the light switches he needed on deck. As Folk said to the camera while an impatient Neese was having a bit of a tantrum: “There’s 20 switches up here!”

See video here:

Neese is such a polarizing figure on Deadliest Catch that Change has a petition going around for signatures to remove him from the hit show that airs on Discovery.

“Elliott Neese’s storylines read like a Jerry Springer script and are a direct result of his poor decision-making and lack of morals,” the petition reads. “Please, Discovery, bring the program back to its roots of achieving the American Dream at all odds, and stop glorifying Captain Neese’s terrible behavior.”

As TV Ruckus points out in its Deadliest Catch recap about Captain Elliott Neese giving up control of the Saga and handing it over to his first mate, he doesn’t come off as a very likeable guy. It’s been a fact all along that if there’s a villain on Deadliest Catch, it’s Neese.

“The track he’s on now, I don’t know how he can keep going on, keep this operation going.” Folk said of Neese.

The Inquisitr’s last story about Elliott Neese was a different problem than his drug addictions. He was fined in January after a cargo inspection in which he was busted for bringing in undersized crabs.

Deadliest Catch airs on Discovery Channel Tuesday nights at 9/8 c.

[Photo Credit: Elliott Neese/Twitter via Change]