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SITKA — A woman and her dog, missing since last Wednesday, were found by searchers at 10 a.m. Saturday morning near the Katlian Bay road north of town, Sitka police said. The woman, Olivia Magni, 28, was airlifted back to town by a Coast Guard helicopter and taken to Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center, Sitka Police Department spokesperson Serena Wild said. Her dog, unharmed, walked out. “She was found with the dog... She was just hypothermic, bumps and bruises,” Wild said, noting that Magni apparently had fallen at some point. The publicly accessible...
Applications for a federal energy efficiency grant for small businesses are open through the end of September, and Rural Alaska Community Action Program, an Anchorage-based non-profit, can help applicants, RurAL CAP Energy Development Specialist Shae Bowman told listeners at Wednesday’s virtual Sitka Chamber of Commerce meeting. The grant in question is the Rural Energy for America Program, REAP, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and aimed at rural communities. The grant offers assistance for the installation of renewable e...
Local trollers and regional fisheries advocates expressed relief today following Friday’s 9th Circuit Court decision to overturn a U.S. District Court ruling that threatened to shut down Southeast Chinook troll fisheries. “Great news,” Alaska Trollers Association president Matt Donohoe said in a brief text while out fishing. “I’m really grateful that the 9th Circuit understood that WFC’s serial litigation was absurd and ruled in Alaska’s favor.” Jeff Farvour, a Sitka based commercial fisherman and board member of the Sitka-based Ala...
The Department of Fish and Game placed the Sitka Sound sac roe fishery on two-hours notice as of 8 a.m. Wednesday, signaling seiners will have two hours to get ready for the first fishing period in this year’s commercial herring harvest. F&G said surveys continue in the process of locating schools of marketable fish in areas suitable for an opening. Though aerial surveys conducted Tuesday detected no fish, the department spotted large numbers of predators, such as humpback whales and sea lions, along the eastern shore of Kruzof Island, the a...
The Southeast king salmon troll fishery opened Friday, Sept. 1, for the third time this summer, though relatively few fish remain in this year’s allocation, the Department of Fish and Game announced. With only about 3,200 kings remaining in the season quota, Fish and Game said the 10-day opening will be a rare “limited harvest fishery,” with each permit holder allowed to take only nine chinook. As a limited fishery, it comes with a few additional rules as well. Fish kept for personal use will count toward the commercial harvest limit, and k...
The Department of Fish and Game has announced that 74,800 "treaty" king salmon (non-hatchery fish) will be available for taking in the summer commercial troll season's first opening, which started Saturday. The department released summer king salmon harvest numbers on June 22. In total, 106,800 kings remain on the table following the spring fishery harvest, the agency said, and the troll fleet will be able to target 70% of those in the summer's first opener. The fleet hooked 24,700 fish in the...
Ground deformation beneath the Mt. Edgecumbe volcano continued in 2023, but no eruption is imminent, a team of experts said at a Sitka public meeting Monday night. But the experts, volcanologists from the Alaska Volcano Observatory, said they plan additional research this summer around the Kruzof Island landmark. Activity beneath the volcanic cone came to the observatory’s attention in April 2022 after an earthquake “swarm” was detected there. Follow-up analysis of satellite data showed the mountain deforming at a rate of 8.7 centimeters annua...
This year's sac roe herring fishery in Sitka Sound held unusual challenges for the fishing fleet, with vast schools of fish on their annual run settling in places tough for purse seiners to operate in during that critical period just before spawning, longtime seine skipper Jamie Ross told the Sentinel. Ross, whose home port is Homer, has fished for more than three decades in Sitka's seasonal herring fishery. This year's fishery was possibly his last. "This was a very complex year; the fish were...
SITKA, Alaska (AP) — Russian adventurer Anatoly Kazakevich sailed into town on a double-hulled inflatable sailboat Monday morning, completing the last leg of an 8,000-mile journey to Sitka from the Siberian city of Irkutsk. Kazakevich and his crew, which ranged between two and six members along the route, sailed the inflatable catamaran Iskatel across the North Pacific Ocean to Homer, Alaska, last year. After wintering in southcentral waters, the Iskatel (which means “searcher’’) brought Kazakevich to Sitka this week to mark the complet...