Deadliest Catch's Sig Hansen Hates When People Refer To The Show As Reality TV

Discovery Channel's "Deadliest Catch" follows captains and their crews as they fish for crab on the dangerous Bering Sea, a frigid expanse of water that is anything but forgiving, especially during the fall and winter months of crab season. In each episode, these captains and crews risk their lives doing one of the deadliest professions on the planet, all for the possibility of a massive payday. Though ships have sunk and men have died during the 18 seasons of the show, sometimes that doesn't seem real to viewers.

Many people refer to the show as reality TV, but Captain Sig Hansen of the Northwestern absolutely hates when people boil what he does for a living down to entertainment. Hansen shared his opinion of what type of show he thinks "Deadliest Catch" is during an interview on the Sirius XM show "Sway in the Morning," and it definitely isn't reality TV.

Sig Hansen has been known to take offense when someone says he is on a reality TV show because, while the show is definitely "real," it isn't anything like any other reality show on TV. "It's a documentary, that's what it is," Hansen explained to Sway during the interview. And that makes a lot of sense, especially when you take into account that the show is no stranger to tragedy.

While "Deadliest Catch" has been accused of faking some moments on the show to increase the drama, the profession of commercial fisherman habitually shows up as one of the deadliest jobs in America. That is evident in an episode from 2017, where Hansen learns of the tragic end of a friend's ship, the F/V Destination — the ship went down with no survivors and only some debris and a slick of fuel recoverable after the accident.

If you really take in all of the danger that these men and women face on the Bering Sea, it becomes obvious fairly quickly that this show is a lot more than your average reality TV show.