Lenny Lekanoff from "Deadliest Catch" is the engineer on the Wizard fishing vessel in the Discovery Channel reality docu-series.
Lenny Lekanoff was born and raised in Unalaska (a close neighbor of Dutch Harbor) before the days when air service and the Bering Sea fisheries turned Unalaksa-Dutch Harbor into the United States' top fishing port in the United States. Eight of his nine brothers and sisters were brought into the world by a midwife.
Lenny is a Native American Russian Aleut, whose family has deep roots on the island of Unalaska going back more than a century. The Aleut culture has a rich and diverse history of fishing along the Aleutian chain, and Lenny's family honors their heritage by smoking and drying salmon every year.
Raised as a devout Russian Orthodox, Lenny has a wife and daughter and a very large extended family. It's a challenge to go anywhere in Unalaska without running into one of the Lekanoffs, many of whom have lived their entire lives on the island. Lenny's father, Nikolai, is 81 and has been the caretaker of the Orthodox Church of the Holy Ascension for more than 45 years. The church dates back to 1825 when Russia still owned Alaska and the Aleutians had already adopted many Russian cultural attributes like personal names and religion.
The opportunities to fish professionally came early for Lenny, and for the last 25 years, he's made his living fishing the waters of the Bering Sea and the Aleutian Islands. A professional crabber, Lenny joined the Wizard crew after a previous vessel that he crewed on went out of business under the government-run buyback program.
Lenny recently retired because of his 16-year-old daughter, who was very worried about his safety onboard the ship. However, he came back to the Wizard to help Capt. Keith fill in a roster depleted by injuries.
Onboard, Lenny is able to take charge of all the maintenance and upkeep of the ship's systems, from the engine room to the forepeak, and yet still put in a full shift as a deckhand.
Lenny Lekanoff was born and raised in Unalaska (a close neighbor of Dutch Harbor) before the days when air service and the Bering Sea fisheries turned Unalaksa-Dutch Harbor into the United States' top fishing port in the United States. Eight of his nine brothers and sisters were brought into the world by a midwife.
Lenny is a Native American Russian Aleut, whose family has deep roots on the island of Unalaska going back more than a century. The Aleut culture has a rich and diverse history of fishing along the Aleutian chain, and Lenny's family honors their heritage by smoking and drying salmon every year.
Raised as a devout Russian Orthodox, Lenny has a wife and daughter and a very large extended family. It's a challenge to go anywhere in Unalaska without running into one of the Lekanoffs, many of whom have lived their entire lives on the island. Lenny's father, Nikolai, is 81 and has been the caretaker of the Orthodox Church of the Holy Ascension for more than 45 years. The church dates back to 1825 when Russia still owned Alaska and the Aleutians had already adopted many Russian cultural attributes like personal names and religion.
The opportunities to fish professionally came early for Lenny, and for the last 25 years, he's made his living fishing the waters of the Bering Sea and the Aleutian Islands. A professional crabber, Lenny joined the Wizard crew after a previous vessel that he crewed on went out of business under the government-run buyback program.
Lenny recently retired because of his 16-year-old daughter, who was very worried about his safety onboard the ship. However, he came back to the Wizard to help Capt. Keith fill in a roster depleted by injuries.
Onboard, Lenny is able to take charge of all the maintenance and upkeep of the ship's systems, from the engine room to the forepeak, and yet still put in a full shift as a deckhand.