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January 2024 A prized Mental Health Trust lot by Blind River Rapids, a popular recreation site for sport fishing, was sold at auction to a USCG family. Toler and Jessie Alexander are eager to return to Petersburg after retiring from the Coast Guard in a few years. The borough listed its top priority capital projects, and the Petersburg Medical Center replacement was first and second on the list – for the main hospital construction and the main hospital interior build out. Petersburg Indian A...
Next season's Tanner crab biomass numbers in Southeast Alaska are down, but the area's golden king crab numbers continue to climb. The two commercial fisheries open on the same day – Monday, Feb. 17, 2025 – and that is by design. "Tanner seems to fluctuate across the region ... on any given year," Adam Messmer, Regional Shellfish Biologist for Alaska Department of Fish and Game explained the Pilot. "Permit holders with dual permits GKC/Tanner will focus on one species while it is up and provide...
December 12, 1924 – Oscar Sather, of the Shields-Sather Lumber & Box Company, is figuring on plans for six cottages for rent or sale, which, if the plans materialize, will somewhat relieve the present famine in lack of houses. At the present time in Petersburg it is impossible to get either houses or apartments or any business location. The new business block being built by Andrew Wikan and John Hammer has the roof on and is nearing completion, and the entire space on both floors could have been rented a dozen times over, owing to demand. In fa...
On Monday the Petersburg Borough Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution opposing a proposal coming before the Board of Fish two months from now which seeks to reduce the production of hatchery chum and hatchery pink salmon in Southeast Alaska by 25 percent. Max Worhatch, a Petersburg commercial salmon fisherman, addressed the assembly at the start of Monday’s meeting “to voice the commercial fishing industry’s support of a resolution to oppose the Board of Fish Proposal 156.” “Hatchery production has long been an important element of the vi...
State and federal fisheries managers predict that Southeast Alaska fishermen will harvest about 29 million pink salmon in 2025, making for an “average” harvest based on catch data going back to 1960. The prediction comes from a joint National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries/Alaska Department of Fish and Game 2025 Southeast Alaska Pink Salmon Harvest Forecast that ADF&G released last Tuesday. NOAA and ADF&G forecast that throughout the 2025 commercial salmon season, seine, gillnet and troll fishermen across Southeast Alaska wil...
Advisory committees are making recommendations to the state Board of Fish for hundreds of proposals to change certain fishing regulations - a process that happens once every three years for the region. Proposals were submitted by members of the public, organizations, advisory committees and ADFG staff earlier this year. The Petersburg Advisory Committee for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) coordinated with Crystal Lake Hatchery operators Southern Southeast Regional Aquaculture...
November 21, 1924 – Monday evening at the Sons of Norway Hall will be held the first basketball game of the year. The Town Team, sponsored by Sol Freyd, will take on the fast coming school team, and try to teach them a few lessons of the fine points of the game they have learned through the school of hardknocks. Both teams have been practicing regularly and are fast approaching their standard. While the School Team will be somewhat lighter than their older opponents, they plan to run rings around the Town Team. It is expected that the superior...
State officials and industry leaders trying to rescue the ailing Alaska seafood industry are facing daunting challenges, recently released numbers show. The industry lost $1.8 billion last year, the result of low prices, closed harvests and other problems, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Direct employment of harvesters last year fell by 8% to the lowest level since 2001, when counts of harvesting jobs began, the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development said. The monthly average for... Full story
Two thousand and ninety to one. Those were the odds of winning the only elk-hunting permit on Zarembo Island this year — the first time in nearly 20 years the state Board of Game has permitted elk hunting on Zarembo after they were urged to do so by the Wrangell Fish and Game Advisory Committee. Quite literally against all odds, Wrangell resident Curtis Kautz won the lottery. His prize? A 31-day window to try and bag a creature Kautz described as smart, skittish and fast. "They're hard to s...
Hunters harvested 131 moose this season, which according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game was the third highest harvest on record for this area. According to Fish and Game, 45 of the moose were checked in at the Petersburg ADF&G office, 50 were reported to the Wrangell representative and 22 were reported to the Kake representative. The rest were checked in at other ADF&G offices throughout the region. Among the 131 total moose taken this year, 120 were legal harvests and the remaining 1...
October 24, 1924 – Pep, and lots of it, marked the meeting of the Commercial Club held Wednesday night with every member playing strong in the role of “Pepper.” As one member remarked, “It was the peppiest meeting we ever had!” Mrs A. Thomas reported as a delegate to the Alaska Week celebration. She reported a royal good time. J.B. Warrack has said to certain residents of Petersburg that he would subscribe $20,000* toward the building and equipping of a modern community hotel, provided a like amount could be raised among the townspeop...
October 16 – An officer responded to a noise complaint on Ira II Street and determined it was unfounded. The Petersburg Police Department (PPD) received a report of a bear accessing an outdoor chest freezer on Hungerford Hill Road. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) and the Alaska Wildlife Trooper (AWT) were notified. A subpoena was served at the Crane Dock. Papers were served. A driver on Rocky’s Road was issued a warning for operating an offroad vehicle on the highway. An officer conducted a traffic stop at ten mile Mitkof Hig...
Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI) officials hear that processors have mostly cleared out their overflowing inventories of Alaska salmon from the 2022 and 2023 seasons, but the problem remains that Americans don’t buy enough seafood to sustain consistently profitable sales, particularly in years of strong salmon runs. And while last year’s problem was an oversupplied market, which pushed prices paid to fishermen to as low as 20 cents a pound for pink and chum salmon, this year’s harvest may come up short of a robust supply, Greg Smith...
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced this month that it finished revamping its scientific documentation for state-managed salmon fisheries in Southeast Alaska after a U.S. District Court judge ruled in May of 2023 that the 2019 authorization that NOAA created for the regional salmon fisheries did not comply with the National Environmental Policy Act process, nor the Endangered Species Act. NOAA’s new documentation responds to a 2020 lawsuit by the Seattle-based nonprofit Wild Fish Conservancy. WFC sued federal f...
WRANGELL — Though it was important to pinpoint the exact location and extent of damage to the community’s wastewater outfall pipeline into Zimovia Strait, officials also discovered that the 12-inch plastic pipe and the seabed around it have become home to hundreds of sea cucumbers. “Over the years and years, wildlife has figured it out,” Tom Wetor, the borough’s Public Works director, said Sept. 26. Sea cucumbers, a bottom-dwelling invertebrate, proliferate around the nutrient-rich waters near the diffuser end of the outfall line, he said. “I...
The commercial dive fishery for sea cucumbers will kick off across Southeast Alaska on Monday, Oct. 7, and divers this season can harvest up to 1.76 million pounds of sea cucumbers across the region, up from last season's "guideline harvest level" of 1.67 million pounds, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced on Aug. 28. Commercial sea cucumber fishery openings will be announced on a weekly basis with different fishery areas open during different time windows until each individual area's specific guidelines harvest level has been...
Petersburg's moose season opened last week. The one-month window runs from Sept. 15 through Oct. 15. Those hunting on Mitkof, neighboring islands and the mainland are permitted to harvest one bull this fall. There are no regulation changes from last hunting season, and Frank Robbins, Petersburg-Wrangell area biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said he has not seen any notable changes to the health of the central Southeast herd. Last year's Petersburg-Wrangell area harvest was...
The Southeast Alaska sport fishery is on track to exceed its king salmon allocation for the summer by 14,000 fish, prompting the state to close the region to sportfishing for kings. The closure went into effect at 12:01 a.m. Monday, Aug. 26. “King salmon may not be retained or possessed, and any king salmon caught must be released immediately and returned to the water unharmed,” according to the Department of Fish and Game announcement late Friday, Aug. 23. The king salmon sport fishery will reopen on Oct. 1 for the winter season. “While the (...
August 29, 1924 – Again the sea takes a toll from Petersburg. R. Dahl, in the prime of life, falls overboard and is drowned. Last Monday he was taking up a crab net and, while hitching a line to a snatch block that was hanging a short distance off the deck, lost his balance and fell overboard. Mrs. Dahl was in the cabin and their two boys were on deck. They were so frightened and excited that they did not act immediately, but saw Mr. Dahl apparently on top of the water. By the time the nine-year old boy got the small dinghy to where his f...
The Petersburg Borough Assembly has taken a stance against the potential listing of Gulf of Alaska Chinook salmon as a threatened or endangered species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Assembly members voted unanimously to send a letter of opposition to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in response to a petition from the Wild Fish Conservancy, an environmental group based in Washington state, which requested the ESA listing and designation of critical habitat of any GOA...
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...
Heavy fishing on chinook salmon by sport fishermen — including nonresident charter customers — is taking fishing opportunity from Southeast Alaska’s commercial troll fishing fleet this summer. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced last Tuesday that trollers in August and September will likely lose out on the remainder of the summer troll fishery allocation for Chinook because sport fishermen across Southeast are on track to exceed their summer 2024 allocation by about 14,000 Chinook, and because of a regulation change that the depar...
A cyanide spill at a major gold mine in the Yukon Territory — high in the Yukon River watershed — has sparked widespread concern in Canada. But Alaska salmon advocates say the mishap isn’t just a problem for Yukoners: The spill happened upstream of a tributary of the Yukon River. The Yukon is Alaska’s biggest transboundary waterway, and residents along its shores who have depended on salmon for generations are already suffering amid crashes of multiple species. Officials on both sides of the border say it’s too early to know the full impact of...
Considering the shallow, rocky waters in the Blind River Rapids, SSRAA production manager Bill Gass was unsure of how successful the beach seine operation to hand deliver king salmon broodstock to Crystal Lake Hatchery would be. But the team of 20 folks, including local volunteers and staff from the Southern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association (SSRAA) and Alaska Department of Fish and Game, successfully captured and transported 146 live king salmon during the first two Tuesdays in July,...
10 volunteers pulled on their rubber boots and rain jackets last Friday to search Petersburg's beaches for suspicious crab carapaces in observation of European Green Crab Awareness Day. After breaking into four groups, the volunteers combed the waterfronts of the Wilson Creek camp area, Crescent Beach, Greens Camp, and Woodpecker Cove; they found 33 carapaces in total, none of which were green crab. "I think it went well. I think it's good we didn't find any green crab," said organizer and...
