2009-05-16 NW Wild Country Radio Interview with Sig Hansen, Part 1/3

[fear_ciuil]

You can listen to the interview here.

[playing opening measures of Bon Jovi’s “Dead or Alive”]

INTERVIEWER: Saturday morning! Seven o’clock hour here on Sports Radio 950 KJR. Joel Shangle, Bill Herzog. We’re here at Auburn Sports and Marine this morning. We’ll be here until about eight o’clock; we’ll probably hang around for a little while afterwards, but in the mean time, that music, of course, means only one thing … I take that back. It could mean two things. It could mean that Jon Bon Jovi is in the house. However, that is not the case. We’ve got a guy who’s even more popular than Jon Bon Jovi right now. That is Captain Sig Hansen of the fishing vessel Northwestern, of course. You can catch him every Tuesday on Deadliest Catch. He’s been on that show since the whole thing started five years ago, and for my money, he’s probably the most popular captain, especially here in the Seattle area. A local guy, grew up here in Seattle. Of course, the Northwestern, in the off season—the very brief off season that it has—is parked down in Ballard. So, a hometown kid, here on the air, part of “Deadliest Radio.” Sig, we’re proud to have you aboard. I know it’s been a little bit of a hassle to try to catch up to each other after we met at Catch Con, but I’ll tell you what: in anticipation of all these “Deadliest Radio” interviews, we submitted to a handful of websites, and we asked our listeners, if you had a chance to serve up some questions to the guys on the Northwestern, the Cornelia Marie, the Time Bandit, and so forth, what would those questions be? There was one that I think was almost the routine for almost everybody. I think everybody wants to know, what exactly is it like being Sig Hansen today, 2009, versus Sig Hansen in about 2001, 2002, long before this whole Deadliest Catch phenomenon started. Because just in witnessing the way things went down for you guys when we first met at Catch Con about a month ago, you’re not just Sig Hansen, private citizen anymore. Man, you’re kind of public property these days. What’s that like? I mean, how different is day-to-day life?

SIG: Oh, you can’t compare. It’s just night and day. But at the same time, I keep reminding myself that, you know, you’re still a fisherman, and just be that. But at the same time, everything else that we’re doing, you would have never thought. I would have never dreamed it. Ever.

INTERVIEWER: Well, and it’s kind of funny, because I know we’ve tried to connect over the last several weeks since I met you at Catch Con, and I have learned firsthand what your schedule is like. And I’ve got to tell you … there are two things that I’m pretty sure that have changed in your life: number one, you probably get a lot less sleep than you used to, and number two, you probably spend more time on an airplane than you used to. Are those two both the truth?

SIG: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Man, we’re racking up the miles. You know, I think me and all the captains. It’s got us running around, and the stuff that I do on my own, trying to get the boat ready—it’s in town now—so, when that all adds up, it’s a lot of time gone, but hopefully, it’s all worth it, you know.

INTERVIEWER: How, exactly, did you become involved with the Deadliest Catch? Because, if I remember correctly, I believe there was just the one-up documentary that was entitled something like “America’s Deadliest Jobs,” which I think introduced the rest of the world to that crab fishery up there. But how did you actually, you and the Northwestern and your crew, how did you become involved in this particular show?

SIG: Well, basically, you know, yeah; we were just going to do the documentary, and the show is basically a documentary, and we thought, “fine. You know, we’ll get in there and get it done and do it,” and they approached us here at the docks in Seattle. They had heard that most of the fishermen were based out of Seattle, and just, kind of, word-of-mouth, you know, through the fishermen and crew members, and our name popped up. And so, they interviewed a lot of guys. But the truth is, me and my brothers were hanging out at one of the bars down in Ballard, just waiting for them to show up, and by the time they showed up, we were pretty … pretty lubricated, so when they did our little test-screen, you know, they liked what they saw, I guess. And then, it just kept snowballing from there. I mean, we did the one year, they asked us to come back for the next one, and after that, I just … the sky’s the limit, you know.

INTERVIEWER: Has the actual filming of the show changed at all, or is it the same kind of breakdown, same mechanics, you know, same number of people on board, or has it expanded? I mean, obviously, the product has expanded. I mean, you guys have become international superstars. Has Discovery’s presence on your boats expanded along with that?

SIG: Well, I think so. I mean, you know, let’s face it: it went from, you know, a three-part series to an eighteen-part series. Discovery’s dumping a lot more money into it, which is a good thing. You know, they’ve got chase boats that they pay to follow boats around and get footage. They’ve got, you know, the specialized cameras they use so the production company can have better equipment, then just get better footage. And so, once they saw the, you know, that the public really liked this, they started dumping some good money into it, and made it better. Bigger, badder, better.

INTERVIEWER: Now, what is the actual physical breakdown, then, of their presence on your boat? I mean, how many cameras are out there? I know you’ve got, obviously, some that are mounted, and they just pretty much just run twenty-four hours a day, but how many actual camera people, producers, cameras, I mean, how many personnel from Discovery will actually be aboard the Northwestern during the season?

SIG: Well, basically, each boat has got two people on it. Two extra guys. Cameramen. One’s actually a producer. And so … but they’re both filming. And they try to stay up with us, they try to keep up, and that’s the reason for the external cameras that are mounted on deck and in the wheelhouse, so there’s always something rolling, 24/7. But they’re after storylines, you know, so if there’s something interesting going on … you know, they’ll go write their notes down, and kind of … they’ll question you about these little stories that go on board each vessel. And that’s how the show is basically created. So, you’ve got like four months of footage and these guys have got to condense it into eighteen episodes, or whatever, and so they’re just trying to hit the stuff that makes sense, and piece it together so it’s interesting to watch, and, you know, the truth is all there, but they’ve got to get something that’s interesting, as well. And that’s what they do.

INTERVIEWER: Well, I’m kind of curious about that, then. I mean, so they have to go through … you know, I’ve heard, you know, some godawful number of hours of footage they have to go through to get down to the, you know, to that particular series of episodes. So that means they’ve got to edit a lot. Do you, I mean, the one thing you hear a lot from the people who are on reality television, or whatever television, and people say, “Well, that’s not really how it happened, they edited it … it’s different than it really happened.” Have you experienced that at all, or is it fairly accurate to what happens out on the boats?

SIG: Yeah, it is. I mean, as far as the timing, we’re … what’s really … what they have to skew, and … it’s nothing … it’s no big secret, it’s that, you know, it’s the timing. Like if, let’s say one guy gets finished prior to another guy, we don’t want to cut him out of the show, everybody gets their, you know, equal parts, so to speak, so they’ll kind of drag the timing out on a couple of guys, but then, they’ve got stories that go on for … just to fill in that. So that everybody starts and ends at the same time. And so, we understand that. As far as, you know, what you see, it’s pretty much what you get. I mean, that’s what it is. Little bit of editing I’ve seen, where they’ve tweaked a couple of things to make it work better, but nothing that I’m ashamed of, or anything like that.

INTERVIEWER: Well, okay. See, there’s a specific reason for asking that question, Sig, because in the very latest episode, Discovery Channel played up big in the weeks beforehand that Keith Colburn made a call from the Wizard, and he was addressing you, because he needed some help with bait. And it was shown, or represented on the show, that the Northwestern was somewhere within the area, but that you did not respond to his call. I mean, when you watch it on television, it seems as though you heard the call, but you didn’t respond to it. So, that’s why I ask about creative editing.

SIG: Oh, yeah. I Tivoed it and I watched it the next day, and that one kind of struck me a little, because number one, you know, I’m sure Keith called me; obviously, they’ve got him on tape doing it. But if I was in the area or not, I don’t know at that point in time. And so, whether or not I … you know, I know I didn’t answer him, because I never talked to him about it. You know what I mean? So, yeah, it kind of looked like I just ditched him. But I don’t remember ever getting a call from the guy, so…. And that’s the thing: you know, you’ve got 70, 80 boats out there. Keith made it sound like, “There’s one guy I can call out there.” Well, I don’t know about that. There’s lots of boats. So he could have called multiple … you know, he could have called many boats, really. I don’t know why he did that.

INTERVIEWER: We’re talking with Captain Sig Hansen of the Northwestern; you can catch him every Tuesday on Deadliest Catch, and of course, it’s in repeat several times a week on the Discovery Channel. Sig, in reference to the other boats in the fleet, do you think there’s a fair number of them out there who would actually qualify and do well in this medium on the Deadliest Catch? Because what has happened over the course of the past several years—of course, it’s on season number five, now—is that boats have come and gone. I mean, obviously, there’s a handful of you guys who are kind of anchor points for this, but, I mean, are there other boats in the fleet who you look at and say, “Yeah, that’s a pretty darn good boat, and a pretty interesting crew. Those guys would fit.”

SIG: Oh, yeah. I mean, certainly. You know, and it’s … they’ve gone to … there’s going to be a couple of other boats that are going to be around for this next opilio season. So they’ve filmed … you know, half is king crab, half is the snow crab season. And so there’s a couple of other guys jumping in on that. And that’s fine, you know, it just makes it more interesting.

[Part 2]     [Part 3]