Captain Sig Hansen on why Discovery's "Deadliest Catch" Still Hooks Viewers

This was in September when hope was in short supply As the enduring hit returns Tuesday April 20 Hansen adds onscreen quotI39ve been coming up here for 42 years and I have never seen anything like thisquot The gripping twohour episode now streaming on discovery reminds us just how scary it was seven months ago When fisheries were in danger of closing such dramatic and unusual times called for equally dramatic and unusual solutionsTo accomplish that Hansen asks the other fishermen to commit an act so foreign to them it took a global pandemic to consider He asks them to work cooperatively Hansen39s suggestion of allforone and oneforall camaraderie is unnatural for men who pride themselves on rugged individualismquotAs fishermen we want to keep the numbers high and we are always for ourselvesquot he told MediaVillage exclusively on a long and lively Zoom call quotWe are always for ourselves very competitive Teamwork didn39t always pay offquotYet Hansen asks and the other captains agree Hansen locates a trove of giant king crabs He his daughter Mandy and the rest of the crew make short work of scooping up cages full While the others catch a few crabs nowhere near the heft or amount of Hansen39s haul the captains notice Hansen is nowhere to be seen They radio for him Oddly Hansen doesn39t respond immediately Asked about this Hansen mentioned that pesky ailment of quotselective hearingquotHe couldn39t help but chortle at his own assessment and when he did decades of cigarettes and booze echoed in that laugh At 55 Hansen has packed those years and refers a few times to his age to being a grandfather to acknowledging mortality in the time of COVID Rather than on a ship bucking in roiling waters seeing him on land is admittedly odd But here he is in his Seattle home with a black leather recliner in the background Hansen has been working as a fisherman since he was a kidquotI39m honored to be able to say I got to see the latter part of the 3970squot at sea he said Along the way he forged deep friendships with other fishermen and captains quotThe true bonds the relationships are really there Phil Harris and I were very close Keith Colburn and I are closer than most people would imaginequotSure there39s genuine competition among these men and that39s what viewers react to it is a genuine This is not a scripted reality show it39s very much their reality and that has intrigued viewers all these years Hansen considers why landlubbers who only come close to crab when it39s boiled and served with melted butter love this seriesquotI was flabbergasted someone had heard of the industry and wanted to do itquot he said of the show39s beginnings quotI knew it would be a onehitwonder that39s what I figured This should be a documentary I never expected the Hansen brothers on the show We were the shyest people out there and we got to do a showquotHansen recollects cash was tight So en route to his audition he bought a bottle of Thunderbird Since rebranded it was once the hooch you bought if broke and determined to get drunk quotWith the alcohol came couragequot Hansen acknowledged quotThe next thing you know they hired me and my brothers We were the last ones to be interviewed for Deadliest Catch We were the last people so I agreed to meet in a bar at the waterfront I thought it was just for an interview We had lubricated ourselves and by the time they talked to us and pulled out a camera we were half in the bag just being ourselvesquotThe series launched in 2005 and has spawned 11 related specials and shows Since Hansen provided the voice for Crabby in Cars 2 He39s also been a guest on many shows including The Apprentice Of former President Donald J Trump Hansen said quotWhat you see is what you get He was the same guy that he was running the show The Apprentice was really hard raising moneyquotDid they stay in touchquotIf you39re going to go into something like thatquot he said of the presidency quotyou don39t need a fisherman chirping in your earquotThe notion of doing more television appeals to Hansen That mettle we see on the series is the real deal this is a man who39s known hard times and vanquished Among the reasons he39s eminently watchable is that he greets life with a sense of humor Hansen has figured out ways to fish better and smarter including he cites devising bait bags which are now standardHansen grew animated discussing inventions and reached into a closet behind him to extract a blackandwhite composition notebook from when he was a kid He hadn39t shown this to anyone he said and had a blast flipping through it and mentioning his ideas for electric toothbrushes window alarms and GPS modules to put on iceThat raspy coughlaugh escaped once again quotI have not looked at this in a long timequot he said quotA lot of this stuff came to fruitionquotNotebook in hand Hansen recognized that he39s an entrepreneur one who has made his opportunities and jumped on others that came his wayquotTo be a captain you have to be an entrepreneurquot Hansen concluded quotYou have to have that spiritquotDeadliest Catch will be telecast on Tuesday April 20 at 8 pm on Discovery Channel It currently streams on discoveryClick the social buttons above or below to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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Captain Sig Hansen on why Discovery's "Deadliest Catch" Still Hooks Viewers

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Jacqueline Cutler

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Captain Sig Hansen on why Discovery's "Deadliest Catch" Still Hooks Viewers

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