Sorted by date Results 201 - 225 of 376
The rain in Petersburg came in consistent droves this summer, and temperatures were cooler than normal, leaving climatologists fixed on explaining sporadic weather patterns in the past and surely in the future. Petersburg experienced its seventh wettest summer since reports began at the National Weather Service in 1924 — yet there are two days left, said Rick Fritsch, the climate program leader with the department in Juneau. “You had an extraordinarily wet summer,” Fritsch said. “It’d be better if I reported how many days you didn’t ha...
August 10, 1917 – The council met and adjourned for lack for quorum Monday and Tuesday evenings. On Wednesday evening all were present, except Councilman Jorgenson, who was out of town. Considerable time was devoted to discussion of Ordinance No. 42, prohibiting the carrying of intoxicating liquors to houses of ill-repute and also making it a misdemeanor for inmates of such houses to appear upon the streets within the corporate limits of the town. The matter was finally deferred to future meeting pending further legal advice. August 14, 1942 ...
“It’s time for a checkup from the neck up” – meaning an industry time out to evaluate fishing operations and behaviors, advises Jerry Dzugan, director of the Sitka-based Alaska Marine Safety Education Association for over 30 years. Dzugan was speaking in response to the 11 fishing deaths that have occurred in Alaska so far this year. It’s the most in 13 years and follows a 76 percent decrease in commercial fishing fatalities since the 1980s. “The causes are still capsizing, sinkings, swampings and man overboards (MOBs). They haven’t cha...
Boats and trailers lined the launch ramps, residents thronged the beaches, plastic ducks bobbed in Twin Lakes, and Juneau basked under the sun on a record-breaking weekend. The capital city has had a full week of temperatures at or above 70 degrees, and the weekend brought the warmest days of the year so far. Saturday’s high temperature of 81 degrees beat the old record of 80, set in 2009, and is the hottest day of the year to date. Sunday’s high was 78, beating the 1999 record of 75. Those temperatures were recorded at the airport, Jun...
FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP) – The University of Alaska Fairbanks research vessel, Sikuliaq, recently completed the first cruise of its spring and summer research program in the Bering and Chukchi seas. University scientists and researchers from the College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences spent the month of June aboard Sikuliaq studying spring productivity and food web dynamics as well as the negative effects that disappearing sea ice cover may have on Arctic habitats. This 20-day voyage had scientists at sea between St. Lawrence Island and Point H...
As state lawmakers mull ways to update permitting laws to protect salmon habitat, a dual sweepstakes is using text messaging and social media as the means to keep more fishermen informed. “One of the things we’ve learned over the past two years is that most fishermen are getting almost all of their information on their phones,” said Lindsey Bloom, program manager for United Fishermen of Alaska’s Salmon Habitat Information Program (SHIP). “Since the start of this program we have heard from thousands of Alaska fishermen who say they care deep...
Robots are cutting up snow crabs in Canada, a sign of things to come in the seafood processing industry. Overall, seafood processing has a relatively small robotic involvement compared to other sectors. Robots have yet to make it into any of Alaska’s 176 fish processing shops, but the lure of reduced production costs, increased fish quality and crews of worker-bots is turning the tide. The CBC reports that the world’s first crab plant robot began work this spring in a plastic chamber about the size of a shipping container in remote Newfoundland...
The U.S. seafood industry’s contribution to the nation’s economy sank a bit, while Alaska’s output increased slightly and dollar values held steady. An eagerly anticipated annual report released last week by NOAA Fisheries measures the economic impacts of U.S. commercial and recreational fisheries. It highlights values, jobs, and sales for 2015, along with a 10 year snapshot of comparisons. A second report provides the status of U.S. fish stocks for 2016. The Fisheries Economics Report shows that including imports, U.S. commercial fishi...
Alaska’s salmon season officially gets underway in less than two weeks! The first fishery for sockeye and king salmon is set for May 18 at Copper River and the town of Cordova is buzzing, said Christa Hoover, executive director of the Copper River/Prince William Sound Marketing Association. “The mood changes at the start of May with all the folks back in town and boats going in and out of the water,” she said. Enthusiasm among the fleet of more than 500 drift gillnetters has not been dampened by a reduced harvest projection. Fishery manag...
The values of Alaska salmon permits are on a downward slide, while prices for quota shares of other catches continue to skyrocket. Despite an optimistic outlook this year for Alaska salmon catches and markets, buyers and sellers are still feeling a hangover from last year’s tough fishing season. “If you were involved in salmon last year, you probably didn’t have a great year, unless you were in Bristol Bay. There wasn’t a lot of extra money to pick up an extra permit or move into a different fishery, and I think we’re seeing that,” said Doug B...
Automation is coming to Alaska fishing boats in the form of cameras and sensors to track what’s coming and going over the rails. Starting next year, Electronic Monitoring systems (EM) can officially replace human observers as fishery data collectors on Alaska boats using longline and pot gear. Vessel operators who do not voluntarily switch to EMS remain subject to human observer coverage on randomly selected fishing trips. The onboard observer requirement originally included vessels 59 feet and larger, but was restructured in 2013 to include b...
JUNEAU (AP) – An Anchorage-based scientist says paralytic shellfish poisoning is to blame for the deaths of more than 300 puffins that washed up in the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea last fall. Ecologist Bruce Wright’s opinion is different from most scientists who believe the puffins died of starvation. Wright, with the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association, believes the puffins and the thousands of common murres that died in the Gulf of Alaska in 2015 were affected by the shellfish poisoning. “My colleagues are reluctant to say the thing...
ANCHORAGE (AP) – Repair work is underway for a pipeline that has spewed hundreds of thousands of cubic feet of processed natural gas into Alaska’s Cook Inlet, home to endangered beluga whales and other marine mammals. The 8-inch (20-centimeter) diameter pipeline supplies gas for power to four Hilcorp Alaska, LLC production platforms. A spokeswoman said Monday that divers over the weekend discovered a 2-inch (5-centimeter) hole at bottom of the pipeline where it rests on a boulder in the sea floor. “Divers have identified the leak locat...
Seafood sales at American retail stores are on an upswing and should remain that way for the foreseeable future. Better yet - demand for fish captured wild in the USA showed the biggest gains of all. That’s good news for Alaska, which provides nearly 65 percent of wild-caught seafood to our nation’s supermarkets (95 percent for salmon!). A new survey by trade magazine Progressive Grocer showed that retail seafood sales rose nearly 40 percent over the past year, and 56 percent predicted an upturn in seafood sales this year. U.S. wild caught seaf...
The required permits are not yet in hand, but the U.S. Navy is moving full steam ahead on its plans to conduct war training exercises in the Gulf of Alaska for two weeks in early May. Meanwhile, nine coastal communities have so far signed resolutions asking the Navy to instead conduct its training between September and mid-March, times that are less sensitive to migrating salmon, birds and marine mammals. Several more communities have indicated they will do the same by month’s end. “It’s not that we don’t want the Navy to do their training – it...
Alaska salmon fishermen could haul in a harvest that nearly doubles last year’s catch, due to a projected uptick in the number of pinks. An Alaska Department of Fish and Game report on 2017 salmon run forecasts and harvest projections pegs the total catch at 204 million fish. That compares to just over 112 million salmon taken by fishermen in 2016. The catch last season included 53 million sockeye salmon—the fifth largest harvest since 1970—but only 39 million pink salmon, the smallest harvest since 1977. For this year, the forecast calls for a...
Alaska crabbers are hauling back pots from the Panhandle to the Bering Sea, and reduced catches are resulting in record prices for their efforts. The year’s first red king crab fishery at Norton Sound has yielded 17,000 pounds so far of its nearly 40,000 pound winter quota for more than 50 local fishermen. The crab, which are taken through the ice near Nome, are paying out at a record $7.75 a pound. A summer opener will produce a combined catch of nearly half a million pounds for the region. Red king crab from Bristol Bay also yielded the h...
March 2, 1917 – Mayor Pryer received by Tuesday evening’s mail the satisfactory news that the townsite of Petersburg is to be surveyed, which is the first step toward granting patent, and gives a reasonable assurance that the holders of lots may, after the survey is made and accepted, and patent applied for and granted get clear title to the property from the government. The letter is from Attorney John Rustgard of Juneau to whom the council had referred the townsite problem. Mr. Rustgard writes: “By today’s mail I received a letter from Ju...
Puppy Love will soon be putting more people to work in Seldovia, a town of less than 300 people at the tip of the Kenai Peninsula. The love comes in the form of salmon pet treats, formerly made in Anchorage and now ready to come home, thanks to funding from the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development. “The goal was always to come back to Seldovia,” said Brendan Bieri, Chief Operating Officer ofSeldovia Wild Seafoods. “It’s a value-added product, so it’s not like we’re processing and putting it on ice and shipping it...
ANCHORAGE (AP) – A year after tens of thousands of common murres, an abundant North Pacific seabird, starved and washed ashore on beaches from California to Alaska, researchers have pinned the cause to unusually warm ocean temperatures that affected the tiny fish they eat. Elevated temperatures in seawater affected wildlife in a pair of major marine ecosystems along the West Coast and Canada, said John Piatt, a research wildlife biologist for the U.S. Geological Survey. Common murres are an indicator of the regions’ health. “If tens of thous...
Shellfish, sea cucumbers, geoduck clams, seaweeds and biofuels are crops envisioned by a group of Alaskans who are crafting a framework for a statewide mariculture industry expansion. An 11-member task force created last February by Governor Walker has wasted no time advancing its mission to put a comprehensive report on Walker’s desk by next March. The group, which has been meeting regularly, also has attracted wide interest from Alaskans who want to serve on advisory committees as the plan takes shape. The advisory committees include r...
February 3, 1917 – When the smoke of battle lifted at the conclusion of the basketball contest last Saturday evening it was found that Petersburg had the short end of a 50-to-16 score. The outcome, however, did not discourage the local boys who are confident that with the practice gained they will be able to shorten up, close, or maybe overlap the gap between their team and the seasoned Wrangellers. There were fully two hundred people present when the game was called at nine o’clock, after Fred Purinton, as manager of the home team, had add...
Though last year’s season may have hurt, Alaska fishermen may take some comfort in a disaster declaration made by the Department of Commerce last month. Then-Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker determined it and eight other commercial fisheries along the West Coast to have been failures, in a January 18 announcement. Low pink salmon runs across the Gulf of Alaska led to a significant drop in 2016 harvest numbers. This declaration provides Congress with a basis to appropriate disaster relief funding for economic assistance to affected c...
More Pacific halibut will be going to market this year due to an overall boost in the harvests for the West Coast, British Columbia and Alaska. The coast wide catch of 31.4 million pounds reflects a 5.1 percent increase, and for the first time in decades, not a single fishing region met with a decline in halibut catches. The International Pacific Halibut Commission, overseer of the stocks since 1923, released the heartening news on Friday. Halibut catch limits are determined by summer surveys at more than 1,200 stations from Oregon to the...
WRANGELL – Trident Seafoods will be welcoming a new manager for its Wrangell plant during the summer's production run. Nick Ohmer was named as the company's selection in a media brief last week. A lifelong resident of Southeast Alaska, in an interview Ohmer said he would be bringing to the job his local knowledge and personal connections with Wrangell's fishermen. Ohmer grew up in Petersburg, and even before fishing alongside those from the neighboring community he grew up with many of them t...
