Sig Hansen Biography

Sig Hansen is the skipper of the fishing trawler Northwestern in the United States. Hansen has been in each season of the documentary television series Deadliest Catch since 2006, also working as a technical advisor for the production. Sigurd Jonny Hansen was born in Seattle as the oldest of three boys (Sigurd, Norman, and Edgar) of Sverre Hansen, who came from a long line of Norwegian-ancestry fisherman. His father and grandparents pioneered opilio crab fishing in Alaska as a means for crab boats to generate money all year rather than only during the short-term or late-year seasons. He started fishing at the age of 14 while working on his family's boat. He began fishing year-round after graduating from high school, spending an average of 10 months each year in Alaska and the Bering Sea. During the summer, he also fished for mackerel and cod in Norway. He skipped school in his early years to go fishing. Before he was a teenager, Hansen worked as a deckhand on his father's yacht, working his way through the ranks. He became a relief skipper at the age of 22, replacing other captains on the Northwestern and conducting short-term stints on other boats in the fleet. He took over the Northwestern full-time when he was 24 years old. The boat has become a top producer with an exceptional safety record over the years; there has never been a single death at sea in the nearly 20 years Hansen has been at the helm, and its severe injury rate is much lower than that of other boats in the Bering Sea fleet. In 2005 for King Crab and 2006 for Opilio, the Northwestern won the last derby seasons, taking home the honors for both the largest poundage captured and the highest cash earned between the featured boats in the Deadliest Catch. Hansen is the full-time skipper throughout the king and opilio crab seasons, as well as the pot cod fishing on the Northwestern, as of 2011. His younger brothers, Edgar and Norman, are deck boss and deckhand, respectively. Hansen became a published author in March 2010 with the publishing of his book North By Northwestern: A Seafaring Family on Deadly Alaskan Waters (co-written with Mark Sundeen), which hit the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists. Hansen appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on April 29, 2010. During the broadcast, he announced his intention to compete in the upcoming season of ABC's hit reality show Dancing with the Stars. Leno's crew created a Facebook page to rally support for his selection for the program. Hansen revealed in September 2010 that he will not be returning for the seventh season of Deadliest Catch. On October 8, however, it was revealed that Hansen will return to the show. Sig Hansen, together with Tonight Show maestro Doc Severinsen and singer Bobby Vee, were inducted into the Scandinavian-American Hall of Fame in 2014.

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