2009-05-16 NW Wild Country Radio Interview with Sig Hansen, Part 2/3

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[Part 1]

You can listen to the interview here.

INTERVIEWER: Define for me, Sig, if you can, how much work the Northwestern does over the course of the year. For instance, 2009. What, exactly, is on the schedule for 2009-2010 for the Northwestern?

SIG: Right now, we’re getting ready for a salmon charter. So we did our opi season for, what was it, a couple, three months, January-February-March, and then, we’re in shipyard, and then … so, we’ve got June-July-August-and into September for salmon charter, and that’s basically like a big fish taxi. We’ll do that up in southeast Alaska, and then we’re probably going to miss our cod season in September because of that, but … so that’s fine, so at least the boat’s busy. And then October-November, we’ll be busy fishing king crab again, and then, you know, we’ll be done by December, I’m sure, unless some weird thing happens, a strike, or whatever, and then back at it in January. So we try to stay as busy as we can. It’s not all crab. We’re pretty diversified. And if we didn’t have the salmon charter, we’d be fishing cod, you know, in September, or in January, and then jump into opis. So, they don’t show that on the show.

INTERVIEWER: If you log onto triple-w dot f-v-northwestern, f-v stands for fishing vessel, northwestern, which is the website for Sig Hansen and his company, you’ll take a look at the Northwestern link, which tells you about the history of the boat, and it’s pretty obvious to me, Sig, that this thing, it was built to work, and you guys work this thing. The reason why I ask you what your seasons were is because it seems to me like a 365-day work week would be pretty typical if you had your way.

SIG: Well, I mean, you know, we’re crew and owners, so of course we want to work the boat, but, you know, when we were younger, we were gone for—god!—nine to ten, eleven months out of the year, depending on what seasons we fished and how they went. Do I want to do that that long? That’s a long time to be gone, so no. Not if I don’t have to. The boat … you know, if we can keep the boat busy … like, this summer, I won’t be captaining the boat. I’m not going to run it. Edgar’s going to run it part-time; we’ve actually hired a new captain to do this salmon charter, so that we can free up our time a little bit, and do whatever we need to do with Discovery, and all the other things we’re doing. But at least the boat’s busy, you know, it’s working, and that’s what it’s for. You know?

INTERVIEWER: Well, let’s talk about some of those other things that you have to take care of. Obviously, now, with your newfound success, courtesy of the Deadliest Catch and Discovery Channel, you’ve been given a bunch of different opportunities, and I think one of the most exciting and one of the most visible is Alaskan Storm, which is a video game for the Xbox system, which you designed, you created, I mean, it’s kind of your brain child. So, I guess I have a two-part question: first question, how exactly did that game come about, and the second question is, I’ve heard that there are going to be second, and maybe even third, generations of the game. Tell us a little bit about that.

SIG: Well, I mean, you know, first off, I wasn’t a big video gamer, you know. My generation never really got into it when I was younger, but I started, you know, kind of talking to the kids, and thinking, “you know, that could be done.” I mean, I see what they play, and it’s all fast games and stuff, but then, I thought to myself, “well, you know, with the notoriety we’ve got, why not try to do a Catch game, and make it happen?” And so, I met a guy … actually, I met a guy in a bar that was talking about a friend of his at Microsoft; one thing led to another, I go, I said, I know I could do a fishing game, because I just know how that works, and how I could, you know, make that work, and the idea was there. I just needed the vehicle to help facilitate that and just, kind of, word-of-mouth, I found the right guys, and we made it happen. And as far as the next stage, we know that nothing’s perfect the first round, so we want to, you know, we’re going to get some financing for the next one, and then, and start an Xbox number 2, and we also want to start a Wii game, which [??] started. So that one’s gonna be more physical, where you’re, you know, throwing the hook, and doing all that … coiling, baiting, all that stuff, where you could compete against another guy physically. And I think that’d be kind of fun. So. I mean, the ideas are there, it’s just finding the right people to help you make it happen.

INTERVIEWER: We’re on board with Captain Sig Hansen of the Northwestern of Deadliest Catch fame, triple-w dot f-v northwestern dot com is his website, and the website of the fishing vessel Northwestern. Let’s do this: let’s jump out, take a really quick break. When we come back, Sig, let’s go ahead and jump into the physical demands of crab season on the Bering Sea. You’re listening to Northwest Wild Country’s “Deadliest Radio,” we’re America’s number one rated outdoors radio news program, right here on Sports Radio, 950 KJR. Be back in a second. [electric guitar plays] All right. Saturday. Sports Radio, 950 KJR, good morning, folks. Joel Shangle, Bill Herzog, live this morning from Auburn Sports and Marine as the conversation continues here on “Deadliest Radio.” We’re joined by Sig Hansen, the captain of the Northwestern. And, Sig, before we took a break, we threatened to talk about the physical requirements of being a captain, a crabber, being one of the folks who works aboard one of those boats that are portrayed on the Deadliest Catch, and one of the things that you have to deal with that most folks don’t have to deal with when they get up in the morning and do their 9-to-5 is that sleep deprivation is just kind of an everyday deal of yours. But I’d like to know how long, exactly, it is that you have stayed awake on the longest shift you’ve ever pulled aboard the Northwestern. About two or three episodes ago, you and your brother, Edgar, were engaged in a battle over who could stay awake the longest. I think you guys stretched on for almost two straight days. Seems like it was 47 hours, or something ridiculous like that. But can you remember the longest shift you’ve ever pulled with no sleep aboard the Northwestern?

SIG: As a captain, running the boat, I’ve gone over … just over three days.

INTERVIEWER: So, seventy-two hours, not a wink of sleep.

SIG: Yeah. But it was cod fishing. I did it … we were doing three-day trips back-to-back, so … they’re little three-day derbies, from the dock and to the dock, three days.

INTERVIEWER: Do you remember your sloppiest day ever on the Bering Sea? I mean, the worst, gnarliest, nastiest day, where you thought, “Boy, this is as bad as it gets.” Can you remember any one specific day?

SIG: Well, I … you now, Black Sunday’s the one that, you know, comes to mind for most of the guys that went through it. Yeah, I think we lost, like, five boats, or whatever the hell it was back then, and that was … that was not pretty. We’ve had other times where, you know … we’ve seen winds over … I … god. 120, 30 knots?

INTERVIEWER: Right.

SIG: You know, I don’t even know if you could film it, because there’s nothing to film; it’s just a wash. I’ve had … you know, we’ve had incidents where you’ve got into these waves, and for one reason or another, you’ve got … you know, the thing’s been damn near ninety degrees on her side. I’ve had my footprints on the wall.

INTERVIEWER: Oh. Hello. Yeah, I’d say that qualifies as pretty western. Sig, what about the level of the fisheries? I mean, how different are the crab fisheries today versus, you know, five, ten, fifteen, even twenty years ago? Have there been significant changes in the health of the different fisheries?

SIG: Well, you know, the industry’s gone through a lot of cycles, you know, and it’s all cyclical, as far as the crab, you know, they rebound. I mean, it’s not like they’re getting fished out; there’s a lot of natural predation, you know, codfish eat crab, and sole, and, you know, halibut, and so they go through their ups and downs. You know, years ago, ten, fifteen, whatever, it was derby-style. So, depending on how many boats were participating—we had up to … over 200 boats at one time—you’d go out there and depending on how much crab you were able to catch, you know, whatever the quota was, I mean, it was just derby. It was crazy, you know. You went for it. And any guy that fished halibut knows what I’m talking about, too. But … and that was fun. You know, but at the same time, now we have a quota system, so we basically know what we’re going to get before we go up, and that’s really advantageous, it does take a lot of that stress out of the job, but you’ve still got to get the job done, you’ve still got to get it to market, you’ve still got the weather to battle with, but you can … it’s nice knowing that you can stop if you have to. And so, it did make it a little bit safer that way. That’s what it was intended to do.

INTERVIEWER: The one question we’ve had, too, from folks out there on these different websites, is how … why do the processors get to decide when you get to come in. I believe it was two episodes ago, you got a call from one of the processors that said you had to come in 24 hours earlier than you wanted to, and your reactions was … you were a little bit salty.

SIG: [laughs] Oh, yeah. I guess … you know, we’ve got a specific date and the … and all … a lot of times … let’s say your boat packs 200,000 pounds.

INTERVIEWER: Mm-hmm.

SIG: And let’s say you know that you’ve got a million pounds to catch, so therefore, you’ve got five trips, right? They may pull you in short. Well now, you’ve got to make up that difference and try to catch it on another trip, and then sometimes, they go several days, you know, leading periods in between trips, and so, you know, it all adds up in the end. So you want to bang it out as fast as you can; thereby you’ve got less expenses, less time, less fuel, all that. The crab when they’re hot, you know. If you’re in a good spot, you know, if they’re there, you get them. I mean, I don’t … we … time and time again, you’ve seen it where we’re on incredible fishing, and you think, you know, everything’s peachy, and then, it’s just like somebody flicks a light switch.

INTERVIEWER: Right. Right.

SIG: And they’re gone. You know, and they may be gone all over the ocean. For whatever reason, they’re down there, they’re just not crawling. And if the tides are running strong, it slows them down, you know, maybe we’re getting sixty average of king crab and now you’re down to ten, and, you know, you’ve got a two-, three-day soak. Well, you just killed yourself. If you would have had that final pick, or that, you know, final two days of excellent fishing, you know, now you’ve got to catch up for it, and when you get down to grinding like that, those two days can cost you ten. Real easy.

[Part 3]