Sigurd Jonny "Sig" Hansen is an American captain of the fishing vessel Northwestern.
Background
Sigurd Jonny Hansen was born the oldest of three sons (Sigurd, Edgar, and Norman) of Sverre Hansen in Seattle, descended from a long lineage of Norwegian-ancestry fishermen. His father and grandfather pioneered opilio crab fishing in Alaska as a way of giving crab boats a chance to earn money year-round rather than in short, mostly late-year seasons. Hansen started as a deckhand on his father"s boat before his teenage years, working his way up the ranks.
Education
After he graduated from high school, he began fishing year-round, spending on average 10 months per year in Alaska and the Bering Sea.
Career
Since 2006, Hansen has been featured in all seasons of the documentary television series Deadliest Catch, for which he also serves as technical advisor for the production. He began fishing at age 14, working on his family"s boat. Occasionally he also fished mackerel and cod in Norway during the summer.
In his early years, he cut school so that he could go fishing.
At age 22, he became a “relief skipper”, relieving other captains on the Northwestern, as well as doing short-haul stints on other boats in the fleet. By age 24, he began running the Northwestern full-time.
Over the years, the boat has become a top producer with an excellent safety record. lieutenant has never had a single death at sea in the nearly 20 years Hansen has been at its helm, and its serious injury rate is significantly lower than other boats in the Bering Sea fleet as well.
As of 2011, Hansen serves as the full-time captain during king and opilio crab seasons, as well as the pot cod fishery on the Northwestern.
In March 2010, Hansen became a published author with the release of his book (co-written with Mark Sundeen) North By Northwestern: A Seafaring Family on Deadly Alaskan Waters, which reached the bestseller list of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. On April 29, 2010, Hansen was a guest on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. During the show, he expressed his desire to be a contestant on the next season of the hit American Broadcasting Company reality television series Dancing with the Stars.
Leno"s staff set up a Facebook page to gather support for him to be selected for the show.
In September 2010, Hansen announced that he would not return for the seventh season of Deadliest Catch. However, on October 8, it was announced that Hansen would come back to the show.
He provided the voice of a boat named Crabby (modeled after the Northwestern herself) in the Disney Pixar film Cars 2. Hansen was a competitor in the 14th season of Donald Trump"s reality game show The Celebrity Apprentice.
In 2014, Sig Hansen was inducted into the Scandinavian-American Hall of Fame, along with legendary Tonight Show bandleader, Doc Severinsen, and famed singer, Bobby Vee.In March of 2016, Hansen collapsed and fell unconscious on the Northwestern during filming.
Hansen soon regained consciousness and began to resume running the boat. The film crew urged Hansen to go to the hospital, and he was airlifted to a hospital in Alaska. Hansen had suffered a heart attack.
Hansen is currently recovering in an Anchorage, Alaska hospital.