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||||After the coasties left, the Hillstands conferred about the medical kit. "There's no-sense in buying a bunch of expensive fucking drugs," says Andy, who trades caption duties with Jonathan. "If my hand is cut off I want a Goddamn tranquilizer," Jonathan said "That and a bottle of whiskey" crowed Neal. "were old school red-necks." I had a new medical kit once," Jonathan said now reminiscing. "and I took one of those expired tranquilizers. Those thing will put you down." "Will get you a tranquilizer," said Andy. "It's called a 12 pound sledgehammer." Senator Stevens's rationalized plan has created a new sea creature: the rich, shore-hugging crabman. To make money know, a boat owner no longer needs to bother with hiring a crew and starting his engine: instead he can rent is quota, which he effectively owns, to another boat owner, who will then fish for the crab. One such "crab lord" is former captain Larry Hendricks, who now works as a consultant for Deadliest Catch. "I just pay another boat a dollar a pound to catch my crab," he said Hendricks then sells the crab to processors like Trident Seafood's(whose excec are major Stevens campaign donors) for 3.50-5.00 a pound and pockets the difference. The Captains and crewmen who actually do the fishing will run the risk for their buck a pound. "I will make about 300,000$ this season," Hendricks guessed" Just sitting on the beach."
Hansen is not exactly popular among his fish colleagues, perhaps because the Northwestern won a 250,000 bonus for top producing boat on deadliest catch. Keith Colburn,owner/captain of a boat called the Wizard, fumed that Hansen has become arrogant and selfish. " One year I set him on a hotspot and I gave him chart for the area," Colburn told me. "I help him out. I basically dialed him in 100 percent, but he never reciprocated." Hansen also guards his celebrity status. "When he found out I was made a consultant for Deadliest Catch, he went ape-shit," Hendricks told me. "He did not want me shaping the show. He feared that I could bring his world crumbling down, and he want's his name listed on the credits above mine." Hansen is the only active captain whom the Deadliest Catch recognize as a consultant.
Johnathan Hillstrand at the Grand Aluetion Bar,Dutch Harbor Alaska.
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For Sig Hansen, sitting on the beach is not an option. His great-greatgranfather fished herring off the Norwegian isle of Karmoy, as did his great grandfather and father: When Sig was in high school he traveled to Karmoy in the summer and fished there himself. He speaks fluent Norwegian and reveres his God fearing, seafaring ancestors. Every season before he head out to the Bering Sea, with his younger brothers Norman and Edgar, he gets his boat blessed by an island priest. In the Nortwesterns galley- right beside an autographed bicker-chick calender-Hansen mother has hung a reproduction oil painting of an old white bearded man, his head bowed in prayer over a rough-hewn loaf of bread.
