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'Deadliest' is a hit for Discovery, makes stars of crab fishermen
By Athima Chansanchai
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Published on Monday, May 19, 2008
SEATTLE: Critics of the popular Discovery reality show The Deadliest Catch, step off. This is not a job for the common man.
That's the most polite way to convey what crab fishermen on the show think of people telling them they're putting their crews in danger or playing it up for the camera.
''Whatever you see on the boat, it's true to life,'' said deck boss Edgar Hansen, 37, of Mountlake Terrace, Wash., the youngest of the fourth-generation Norwegian fishing clan on the Seattle-based fan-favorite boat, the Northwestern, currently undergoing a major overhaul at the Pacific Fishermen shipyard in Ballard. Staying up 48 hours without sleep, sporadic eating, using a sledgehammer to knock ice off the deck, securing the sorting table when waves wash over the deck, close calls — these are all part of the job. Nothing unusual. Move on.
''This is a super-small industry,'' said Hansen's older brother and captain of the ship, Sig, 42, who started fishing at 14. ''Some people were paranoid the show would make the industry look bad. They were afraid their insurance rates would rise, for obvious reasons. But I'm glad we did it because we made the industry look good. Now I think the fleet is backing us.''
One thing is certain: What began as a documentary-style series about the Alaskan crab fishing industry has become an international sensation in its fourth season, with six ships featured this season.
Discovery's highest-rated show has spawned an Xbox and PC video game, Deadliest Catch: Alaskan Storm (using the Northwestern as its model), and now a book, Deadliest Catch: Desperate Hours, a compendium of fishing stories edited by Larry Erickson ($16.95, Discovery). (Another book, Time Bandit: Two Brothers, the Bering Sea and One of the World's Deadliest Jobs, by brothers Andy and Johnathan Hillstrand, with Malcolm MacPherson, also has emerged as part of the show's inevitable bycatch.)
''It's fun to watch, pretty realistic,'' said Al Schumacher, who fished on crab boats for a decade and now is a partner in a Kenmore, Wash., company called Bravo Environmental. ''It's hard to sit back and start to second-guess what they do, even if some of it doesn't make sense sometimes. But the mental frame is, ''We're in the middle of the Bering Sea; let's get in here, let's get out of here.' ''
Guys like the Hansens (who have another brother, Norman, 41, of Yakima, working as an engineer on the ship) have gone from ''second-class citizens'' to celebrities who are stalked at airports and accosted in grocery stores and casinos. They've been guests on late-night talk shows. Fans eat up 20-year-vet Edgar's superstitious tradition of biting off herring heads for good luck and his quick-witted commands on the deck, especially to greenhorn Jake Anderson.
Their Web site — started by fans — has tons of video footage and a retail section that includes a black thong (Shut up and Fish) among the Northwestern items for sale. Fans have gone so far as to sell on eBay paint chips from the boat.
The crew members are still getting used to their 15 minutes of fame, but they do appreciate how the show makes it clear what they do. (After watching a few episodes, you will know their routine.)
''It's one of the greatest things the show does because this is a very unexplainable job,'' said deckhand Matt Bradley, who's been on board for 15 years. ''You do the same thing over and over. It's very repetitive. To my daughter, I was invisible for years. Now she watches me on TV, it's more real.''
But because the show edits 1,500 hours of film to the most dramatic parts of a job that can take crews away from their families for several months a year, it has received some blow-back for being unrealistic because the crab fleet now uses a system called rationalization: Shares of the catch are divided and owned before they are caught, which would seem to ease up on the pressure to reach crab quotas. But the Northwestern's crew said the pressure is still on, and for those who think it's all for show, Sig Hansen has some choice words.
''Tell them to get up here,'' he said aboard the Northwestern on a recent Monday morning. ''We have the ability to stop if we have to. You can't always fish. But we still have delivery dates to make. We're always racing to catch crab. Crab moves. . . . This is our livelihood. No one is gonna take it away from us. We're still competitive. We may be friends in town, but not fishing.''
The Northwestern crew has been lucky, hauling in full pots on a ship that can hold 220,000 pounds of snow crab or 180,000 pounds of king crab at a time. The price of crab has gone up, as has the demand. In a really good year, each crew member has the potential to make more than $100,000, but the annual income usually hovers around $60,000.
For now, the crew is happy to take advantage of the show's fame. It helps that the natural sibling rivalry among the Hansens — particularly Edgar and Sig — is so entertaining.
Because of the repairs on the ship, the crew gets a rare summer off, spending precious time with their families while grudgingly agreeing to media interviews and, more willingly, to charity events.
''It all adds up. We get to breathe for a little bit,'' said Sig, who has only twice had the summer off since he was 14. ''We're looking forward to it.''
New episodes of Deadliest Catch premiere at 9 p.m. Tuesdays on Discovery.
SEATTLE: Critics of the popular Discovery reality show The Deadliest Catch, step off. This is not a job for the common man.
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