Deadliest Catch: The cops are called

It’s been a tension-filled season of Deadliest Catch thanks to the low crab count and high stakes on the Cornelia Marie. Fans have been watching Capt. Derrick Ray clash with late skipper Phil Harris’ sons Josh and Jake, who are now partial owners of the boat as well as deckhands, since before the ship left the dock, and it all comes to a head in Tuesday’s episode (Discovery, 9 p.m. ET). The crew threatens to call an abrupt end to king crab season because Ray isn’t filling the tanks with the elusive blue crab, and Ray, convinced he’s smelled marijuana on Jake, searches for and finds pot paraphernalia in the engine room and has a cop waiting to question Jake — who denies he’s been smoking weed — when they hit land to off load. Watch a clip below.

Explaining his decision to phone the authorities, Ray tells EW he did it because he has a captain’s license, which means he could be criminally punished for problems on his boat, and the law is zero tolerance — the Cornelia Marie could be seized. “I thought, ‘How am I gonna try to get this kid to wake up, to understand that the law is zero tolerance?” Ray says. “Drugs are not allowed on boats. You have a partner. I stood there and I thought, ‘You know what, I’m just gonna call the cops.’ The only thing I can do is give ‘em the paraphernalia that I found and that’s that. It was just to try to make a frickin’ point, to get the kid to snap the hell out of it. I’ve been fishing my whole life. Have I seen lots of marijuana smoked on boats? Yes. Back 20 years ago, there was no zero tolerance. Today the laws are different. You have to act differently and carry yourself differently.”

As the clip shows, Jake leaves the boat before the last line is tied and walks right past the cop. Where is he headed? The airport. Viewers will have to watch till the end of the hour to see how that unfolds. EW has been unable to reach Jake. But Josh, who has yet to see the episode, took a guess at what his brother — who, again, insists he wasn’t smoking pot — may have been thinking in that moment: “I think he just didn’t want to deal with the hostility. I mean the guy was constantly attacking us. Jake’s not quite as strong as me. I don’t mind people attacking me verbally. You can only deal with somebody for so long when you’re in close quarters and they’re not willing to listen to anything. You kinda gotta just get out of the situation before it escalates into a worse deal,” he says. “[But] I don’t really know. I can’t speak for Jake on a lot of things as for his decision-making. I would have handled that situation a little bit different.”

UPDATE: Click here for more of our interviews with Derrick Ray and Josh Harris, who cut to the heart of their differences and update us on what they’re up to today.

‘Deadliest Catch’: Derrick Ray talks about skippering Cornelia Marie with Phil Harris’ sons — EXCLUSIVE