‘Deadliest Catch’: Captain Sig Smoked a House During Years of Cigarette Addiction

Deadliest Catch Captain Sig Hansen knows all too well the havoc cigarettes can play on you, not only with your health but on your finances as well. Captain Sig Hansen sat in the captain’s chair of the Northwestern and talked with his daughter Mandy Hansen.

What he had to say to his captain-in-training daughter stunned her a bit. They talked about Sig’s health emergencies as well as the toll cigarettes take on your health. But something else Sig Hansen said about another price he paid that seemed to stun Mandy. The Deadliest Catch father-daughter duo was surprised over how the numbers added up. Not the crab, but the cigarettes.

Deadliest Catch Update: Captain Sig Hanson Battles Smoking

Back in 2016 Sig Hansen’s first heart attack hit him in the wheelhouse of the Northwestern. He survived but he went on to have yet another. This time he was on land preparing for the start of another Deadliest Catch king crab season. After taking an antibiotic prescribed by his dentist, he swelled up with an allergic reaction. The medication the hospital used to stop the reaction is believed to have brought on chest pains that  caused Sig to have another heart attack.

Still, the addiction to cigarettes was so strong he was busted by the medical workers in the hospital while sneaking out to have a cigarette. After going through a procedure where they inserted a stent to stop the heart attack and clear the clogged artery, Captain Sig Hansen was still going to smoke. But he didn’t get the chance after the nurse caught him attempting to sneak out. That embarrassed the rugged Deadliest Catch sea captain and the day he was released from the hospital, he threw his cigarettes out.

Sig Smoked Himself the Price of a House in His Lifetime

While the cigarettes caused health issues over the years, they also took a good chunk of change out of his pocket. Mandy came onboard to help her father get back into the swing of things after his second heart attack. Sig Hansen tired easily on the blood thinners they prescribed for him. So Mandy got the ship ready for their next Deadliest Catch voyage. Then she helped take up some of the captain’s slack while on board.

During a chat on the Deadliest Catch camera, Sig Hansen talked to his daughter about cigarettes while in the wheelhouse together. They calculated the cost of the cigarettes yearly and what it cost Sig since he started smoking. They came to the conclusion that the amount of money he spent over his lifetime on smokes, was about the same amount of money he’d spend if he were to purchase a house. It stunned Mandy to look at it in this context as well as her dad. In comparison, the two saw this as if Sig Hansen “smoked a house” during the years he puffed away.

Deadliest Catch: Captain Learns About Deadliest Reaction

During the health ordeal, Sig Hansen found out something that others might not know about antibiotics. It seems he learned that just because he took the same antibiotics before without any type of adverse reaction didn’t mean a thing. The Deadliest Catch star learned that you can become allergic to something even if you ingested it fine in the past. Sig probably wouldn’t have been alive if he started the medicine out at sea. The doctor told he had only about 10 more minutes before the reaction would stop him from breathing.

Sig Hansen said before a previous trip the same dentist gave him the same antibiotics. But he forgot them at home when they set sail on the Bering Sea. If that adverse reaction happened while he was out at sea, he’d been without help. Luckily for Sig, he took the first antibiotic dose while still on land and running errands for his next trip. He b-lined it to the hospital where an injection stopped the reaction but probably set off the second heart attack. Captain Hansen wasn’t aware there’s a possibility of suddenly developing an allergic reaction to antibiotics that he took without any problems before. The Deadliest Catch is on Tuesday nights on The Discovery Channel

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