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Southeast Alaska's commercial red king crab fishery will open Nov. 1 after stock assessments revealed the highest red crab populations in decades. Last week, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced a regionwide guideline harvest level of 211,573 pounds for the 2025/2026 season, exceeding the 200,000-pound threshold required for a traditional competitive commercial fishery. The biomass numbers and the available surplus for harvest, came as somewhat of a surprise to fishery managers fishermen who had been preparing for a different type o...
The 2025 Southeast Alaska Purse Seine Fishery closed in early September with just under 20 million pink salmon landed - well below the forecast of 29 million and marking the lowest odd-year harvest since the 1980s. "Fair to say that the season was a disappointment as far as pink salmon harvest goes," said Troy Thynes, Alaska Department of Fish and Game Region I Management Coordinator. The disappointing harvest adds pressure to an industry already facing high fuel costs, inflation, and low...
Petersburg Medical Center is launching a new cohort of its on-the-job training Certified Nursing Assistant program next Monday, offering people in Petersburg a valuable opportunity to get paid while earning a professional healthcare certification in just five weeks. "We hire people who say they want to become a CNA, and then we pay them while they're taking the class," explained Chief Nursing Officer Jennifer Bryner. "At the end of the class, if it's a good match, then we would offer a... Full story
Whether it's online strangers sending kids messages in Roblox, scammers phishing for passwords, or artificial intelligence platforms targeting young people with relationships that can distort how an entire generation views human connection - families with children and teens are facing new kinds of online safety challenges. New digital dangers exist as the results of tools and devices that "were released to the public without long-term studies or clear guidelines, leaving families and schools to...
New York's Manhattan Island is surrounded by the East River, the Harlem River, and the Hudson River - all three are tidal estuaries that create a natural 28.5-mile open water course around the island. In 1915, a lone swimmer first completed this circuit, now known as the 20 Bridges Swim, and since then only around 1,400 endurance athletes have successfully finished the marathon swim. On August 24, Abbey Jackson Ferree, of Petersburg, completed the 20 Bridges Swim in eight hours and 51 minutes -...
After 35 years working in local public radio - 27 years as general manager of KFSK in Petersburg - Tom Abbott has reached retirement. It'll just require a bit more crisis management before he can fully clock out. In an interview with the Pilot, Abbott said he provided KFSK's board of directors a resignation letter last year, with 18 months built in to pass the torch to the station's next manager. He hoped a successor could be hired and would arrive by this summer and the two could work together...
Living close to the land inspires Diyet van Lieshout's songwriting for her band Diyet & The Love Soldiers, which is touring Southeast Alaska and will be stopping for a performance in Petersburg this month. In coordination with the Petersburg Arts Council, the Indigenous singer-songwriter, who draws from Southern Tutchone, Tlingit, Japanese, and Scottish roots, will bring her trio to Petersburg's Wright Auditorium on September 16 for a 90-minute show combining storytelling and music. Diyet...
The Petersburg will host its second annual live music swing dance benefit concert in the Elks Ballroom on Saturday, Sept. 27, with free Lindy Hop dance lessons being offered this month leading up to the fundraiser. The event will benefit The Petersburg Arts Council, The Market in Petersburg which will be providing mocktails, and the Petersburg High School Drama program who are providing appetizers. Matthew Wintersteen, who teaches the swing dance lessons with Elsa Wintersteen, said the Tuesday...
Petersburg's Rainforest Festival is back, after several years with dispersed year-round programming but without the customary fall festival. Taking place mostly on the weekend after Labor Day, September 3-7, the festival will once again offer an immersive celebration of local ecology, art, science, and locally harvested food. "We're really excited to have it back," says Sunny Rice, one of the festival's organizers. "While the dispersed events were lovely, it left us kind of without a Rainforest...
After six years of collecting data using trail cameras, radio collars, and DNA analysis, a deer population research project on Mitkof Island, currently led by Ketchikan-based Alaska Department of Fish and Game Wildlife Biologist Tessa Hasbrouck, is entering its final phase. Historically, deer population monitoring in Southeast Alaska relied on relatively simple methods. Biologists would walk through the woods each spring counting deer pellets, or fly over alpine areas in summer tallying visible...
Kacey Hammer is stepping into her first official teaching role this fall as Stedman Elementary’s newest kindergarten teacher. Hammer is currently completing her Master’s degree in Elementary Education at the University of Alaska Southeast, working toward her K-8 certification. She’ll begin the school year on a provisional license while finishing her student teaching requirements in her own classroom — an arrangement that her UAS advisor encouraged. “He was like, ‘You’re ready,’” Hamm...
Newly college graduate Trinity Edwards grew up in Winnifred, Montana, population 150, and was looking for a place like Petersburg - a tight-knit community that supports its schools - as the place to start her teaching career. "I wanted a school that's going to be supported by the community," Edwards says. "Back home, our big thing was basketball too - the entire town showing up for games. It was going to be really important for me to have a community that was supportive of the school - like...
Life in small town Alaska will probably be a pretty smooth transition for Stedman Elementary's new fourth grade teacher Trevor Wilson, who grew up in Unalaska – an island community on the Aleutian chain similar in size to Petersburg -- where his father worked as a school principal. As a younger man Wilson had not wanted to follow too closely in his father's footsteps and didn't want to be a teacher. But when he went off to college at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Montana, he had a c...
After 16 years in special education and a recent year teaching in one of Alaska's most remote villages, Jocelynne Parker is bringing her passion for those needing extra support to Petersburg High School. Parker comes to Petersburg from Houston, Texas, by way of Nuiqsut, a village of 600 people on Alaska's North Slope, where she taught PreK through 12th grade special education for the past year. The transition from Houston to the Arctic Circle was dramatic, but Parker connected with the culture...
The elementary school's new counselor Dave Fonken comes to Petersburg from Southern Oregon. He says he found Petersburg's thriving school community and endless local outdoor recreation opportunities very appealing. "I was looking for a combination of a really healthy district with a lot of places to play," Fonken explains. "Both of those things really came together here." Fonken brings eleven years of school counseling experience to his new role. His journey in education began as a Spanish...
The Petersburg Borough Assembly unanimously approved moving forward with a $700,000 sewer line repair project at the Petersburg Aquatic Center during its Monday meeting. The vote authorizes the borough to seek bids for replacing approximately 150 feet of sewer lines beneath the slab concrete floors of the aquatic center's locker rooms, where drains have become disconnected from the main sewer system. "We have a few lines, especially in the family locker room, that are plugged completely with...
The new Wellness, Education, Research, and Communications (WERC) building opened its doors this month, marking the completion of the first major phase of Petersburg Medical Center's hospital replacement project. And according to PMC CEO Phil Hofstetter, the success of this facility has already changed how he's thinking about the rest of the project. "This is just step one," Hofstetter told the Pilot on a recent tour of the 15,000-square-foot building. He will be the first to say that the slow... Full story
Fisheries managers cut short this summer's Southeast Alaska commercial dungeness crab season by six days because initial harvest projections fell below the required threshold for a full season. But now, after determining that a high number of soft-shelled crabs contributed to low harvest projections, managers have opted to open fall dungeness fishing for its full length. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced Monday that the fall dungeness crab season in Southeast Alaska will proceed f...
A deteriorating baseball dugout that had been gathering moss and rot at Petersburg's ball field has found new life as a much-needed weather shelter at the Banana Point boat launch. Back in March, Public Works employee Martin Odegaard was dropping his child off at Banana Point to catch the boat to Wrangell for a wrestling trip on a typically miserable late-winter day. "It was pissing rain, as it always is this time of year," Odegaard recalled. "And so all these kids are getting soaking wet. I'm...
Hatchery managers had hoped that June's steady rainfall would spare them from having to intervene in this year's king salmon run, allowing fish to reach Crystal Lake Hatchery naturally without the stress of human handling. Those hopes evaporated in late July when a few hot days right at the wrong time caused a significant mortality event for king salmon transiting the shallow waters between Blind River Rapids and Crystal Lake Hatchery. On July 20, after observing a hundred or more king salmon...
After 17 years of shaping Petersburg's infrastructure, this has been the final week on the job for Public Works Director Chris Cotta before relocating to Florida, where he'll serve as Public Works Director in Tarpon Springs, a city on the Gulf Coast around the size of Juneau. As Cotta wraps up his tenure, Aaron Marohl-who has deep roots in the community-steps into the director role, inheriting an experienced crew and a long list of ongoing projects. From Florida to Petersburg and back Before...
Petersburg Borough Assembly Member Scott Newman has filed to run for mayor, making him the first declared candidate to replace Mark Jensen, who announced in June he would not seek reelection after 18 years in elected office. Ten candidates have submitted paperwork so far to Borough Clerk Rebecca Regula since the filing window opened July 29. Candidates have until 4:30 p.m. on Aug. 26 to file for positions on the Oct. 7 ballot. Raliegh Cook has filed to run for borough assembly. Two assembly...
The faces in the black and white photos on display this month in the Clausen Memorial Museum tell the remarkable story of the homesteaders who settled Point Agassiz in the 1920s and 30s. A dozen children giggle on the steps on the little red schoolhouse. A prize bull watches over dairy cattle grazing in a meadow. Families harvest from large gardens. The Model T milk truck drives its route down a snowy road to the point for a milk delivery to Petersburg. "Recollections of Point Agassiz: The Life...
The Petersburg Borough Assembly narrowly rejected a resolution Monday that would have authorized police to dispatch approximately four black bears that Petersburg Police Chief James Kerr says his officers have identified through repeated unsuccessful attempts at non-lethal deterrence. The resolution failed by a single vote after Kerr presented evidence of what he described as "learned behavior" by specific bears. "We've tried paintballs, pepper balls," Kerr told the Pilot. "Pepper balls is like...
The opportunity is growing for home builders in Petersburg to use locally milled Tongass timber in their new building projects. The sawmill on Falls Creek Road - Alaska Timber and Truss, owned in partnership by Brett Martin and Mike Duman - is offering complete home and cabin kits using locally harvested timber. The operation produces solid wall and timber frame cabin kits and larger stick-built home packages. "The cabin kits are kind of more of a traditional size ... generally speaking, under...
