Sorted by date Results 726 - 750 of 931
Comments are still being accepted for the proposed Southeast State Forest Management Plan that has raised some concerns among Petersburg residents. The plan applies to lands designated by the Legislature in 2010 and 2011 as the Southeast State Forest, which has the primary purpose of timber management. It’s meant to guide long term management of the lands and identify policies to be followed. The plan includes a total of 4,467 acres in the Petersburg Management Area: 664 in the Rowan Bay Unit on Kuiu Island, 890 in the Frederick Point Unit, 1...
Of all the global fish news sites, London-based Undercur-rent News has risen to the top when it comes to scoops on sales of Alaska seafood companies. The latest - Icicle Seafood owners Paine and Partners of San Francisco are having a tough go selling their wild salmon assets in the face of a tight market and another big wild harvest on the horizon. Icicle produces fresh, frozen and canned salmon at plants in Petersburg, Seward, Egegik/Bristol Bay, Larsen Bay/Kodiak Island; and near Dillingham. “Final bids are in and news on if Icicle will be b...
The 2015 spring troll fishery got its early start this week. The fishery opened in select locations at 12:01 a.m. today, Thursday. Last year, the first spring troll fishery opened on May 1. Frederick Sound, Ernest Sound, the Neets Bay Terminal Harvest Area and the Hidden Falls Terminal Harvest Area opened and will remain so through April 30, according to an Alaska Department of Fish and Game press release. “Frederick Sound has always been a good area,” Sitka Troll Fishery Biologist Pattie Skannes said during a public meeting in Petersburg las...
Caribou instead of corn dogs…salmon instead of Trout Treasures… seal meat in place of spaghetti – all could soon be available to more Alaskans if traction continues on a new bipartisan bill before the Alaska legislature. The bill - HB 179 - allows schools, senior centers, hospitals, child care centers and other facilities to accept and serve fish, game, plants and eggs that are donated by subsistence and sport users. Currently, well-meaning state laws intended to prevent the commercial sale of wild game make the practice illegal if a progr...
With some troll areas expected to open in mid-April, "a little early" as Sitka Assistant Troll Fishery Biologist Grant Hagerman put it, local fishermen are gearing up for the spring season. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game held a public troll fishery meeting Wednesday afternoon in assembly chambers. An announcement regarding spring fishery plans is expected sometime next week, Troll Fishery Biologist Pattie Skannes said, after all public meetings have wrapped up on Friday. Frederick Sound...
File this fish story under the “can there be too much of a good thing” category. Alaska is expecting another bumper run of salmon this year– state managers announced last Friday a projected total catch of 221 million salmon, 39 percent higher than last year. (The numbers for Chinook salmon are still being calculated,) Regional catch projections for this summer are up across the board, according to Runs and Harvest Projections for Alaska’s 2015 Salmon Fisheries and Review of the 2014 season by the AK Dept. of Fish and Game. Driving the numbers...
The Sitka Sound sac roe herring fishery closed last week after a quiet, steady week of fishing. The guideline harvest of 8,712 tons was reached by 6 p.m. on Wednesday, March 25. The fishery first opened for a few hours on March 18 at 3 p.m., after being put on a two-hour notice at 10 a.m. “It was pretty much open daily until the following Wednesday,” Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist Dave Gordon said. The 48 permit holders voted to fish cooperatively this year with a poor sac roe herring market. Gordon said there were around 25 sei...
Volunteers are needed to help craft new safety rules that are being written for older boats – which includes the bulk of Alaska’s fishing vessels. Called the Alternate Compliance Safety Program (ACSP), it is part of the 2010 US Coast Guard Authorization Act and is aimed atvessels that will be 25 years old by 2020, are greater than 50 feet in length, and operate beyond three nautical miles. The program will include most of Alaska’s fishing fleet — a 2014 maritime study by the Juneau-based McDowell Group shows that the majority of Alaska...
Laura Nan Johnston, 82, died on January 19, 2015. Born to Wendell and June Abell on February 26, 1932, in Chama, N.M., Laura's mother taught for The Bureau of Indian Affairs moving them to Sitka, Alaska, where she lived through high school. She attended Oregon State University (OSU) as a Delta Zeta and with a major in science she became a medical technician. There she met Norman Dale Johnston whose major was fisheries biology, and they both graduated in 1955. They were married in 1956, and by... Full story
Seven times is the charm for building some momentum on a measure that aims to give personal use (PU) fisheries a priority over commercial and sport users. As it stands now, the three fisheries all are on equal footing in the eyes and actions of state managers. The priority shift has been introduced during each of the last seven legislative sessions by (now) Senator Bill Stoltze (R-Chugiak), but has never made it past a first hearing – until now. “It only took Sen. Stoltze, the bill sponsor, chairing the hearing committee himself,” quipp...
There are different management challenges with the Petersburg-Wrangell area having more freshwater opportunities, but new Area Manager for Sport Fish Patrick Fowler said the move has "been good." Fowler came to Petersburg in late September after serving as the assistant area biologist in Sitka for about five years. He had worked with his predecessor Doug Fleming before and "always liked Petersburg." "It was a job opportunity to advance," Fowler said. "I thought it would be a challenging career...
Those looking to work at Petersburg’s fish processors will have a good chance to jump onboard with this summer’s pink salmon season predicted to be a big one. “The 2015 harvest forecast of 58 million pink salmon is well above the recent 10-year average harvest of 41 million pink salmon, and a harvest of that magnitude would be in the top ten harvests since 1960,” according to a guide put out by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s Andy Piston, pink and chum salmon project leader in Ketchikan, and Steve Heinl, Ketchikan regional research...
This year’s Tanner crab season saw its largest harvest in 15 years while prices dropped. Preliminary estimates show the 2014-15 Tanner fishery in Registration Area A (Southeast Alaska) is 1.42 million pounds with 84 permit holders, according to Alaska Department of Fish and Game Lead Crab Biologist Joe Stratman. “This harvest exceeded last season’s harvest by 170,000 pounds, and is the largest Tanner harvest in 15 seasons,” he said. “You have to go back to the 1999-2000 season to find a larger harvest of Tanner crab in Southeast Alaska.... Full story
There's a wide variety of animals on Mitkof Island, so you may not think much about the "unsung hero" of the ecosystem, as middle school teacher Jo Ann Day put it. But if you are one of those interested in bats, you'll soon have a chance to become a citizen scientist and help out the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. With only two scientists in the wildlife diversity program monitoring the mammals, ADF&G wants to extend research in Southeast Alaska to Petersburg by having volunteers complete d...
Print your licenses at home and go fishing. The Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game’s revamped Online Store is the go to place for all fishing (and hunting) licenses and it now offers two new features. “Fishermen, both sport and commercial, can now print their licenses at home. They can purchase it online, immediately print it and go out fishing,” said Michelle Kaelke, Financing and Licensing Supervisor for the department. “They can buy it before they go out to the fishing grounds, or if they’re traveling from Seattle or wherever, they can have ever...
The Sitka Sound sac roe herring fishery opened at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday under a cooperative model. Dave Gordon, area management biologist at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said the decision was made by permit holders to eliminate competition and lower costs to “make it worthwhile to go after the product” as the market is poor. It wasn’t a popular decision among tenders, however. “There’s a lot less boats here,” said Tanner Mackiewicz, president of the Alaska Independent Tendermen’s Association. “A lot of people without jobs.” He said the...
A nearly $12 million cut in state funds is on tap for the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game if state policy makers have their way. That was one early outcome of legislative House finance subcommittee meetings last week, as they wrapped up the first step in a budget process that will see cuts in agencies and programs almost across the board. According to Juneau Resources Weekly, the ADF&G budget reductions cut across all divisions with sport fishing facing the most personnel losses at 12 seasonal jobs. The Division of Habitat could lose $400,000;...
March 6, 1915 – The Alaska school-land bill was passed by congress, and has been signed by the president. The measure provides that moneys derived from the sale of lands in the grant, which is comprised of sections 16 and 33 in all of Alaska, shall be used toward the support of territorial schools. In the Tanana valley, section 16 is added to the grant. Four sections near Fairbanks are granted for college purposes. March 8, 1940 – At Monday's City Council meeting a letter from Superintendent George V. Beck wrote that the School Board had gon...
JUNEAU (AP) — A review of the commission that regulates commercial fisheries participation in Alaska details inefficiencies, a backlog of permit applications and options for restructuring. The report requested by former Gov. Sean Parnell reviewed operations of the three-member Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission. That board decides how many fishermen can participate in a limited fishery and who receives the permits. Parnell requested the review in August after the Legislature sought its own audit. It was written by Tom Lawson, former d...
Meeting in Wrangell last week, the Alaska Board of Fisheries elected to maintain the current Southeast Alaska Area Dungeness Crab Fisheries Management Plan. A trio of policy proposals would have repealed the plan and its early closure thresholds, returning management of the fishery to size, sex and season, as used elsewhere. “I understand the reason this proposal was put forward,” board member John Jensen said of Proposal 58. “Size, sex and season has been a very good way to manage fisheries for a long, long period of time in South...
Alaska seafood marketers are facing some strong headwinds heading into 2015, notably, for sockeye salmon and crab. Snow crab is Alaska’s largest crab fishery, underway now in the Bering Sea. The fleet has a slightly increased 61 million pound catch quota; boats also are tapping on a hefty bairdi Tanner crab catch, the larger cousin of snow crab. A 25% increase in snow crab, the unexpected 15 million pound Tanner fishery, a weak Japanese yen, plus several million pounds of Russian snow crab from a new fishery in the Barents Sea, (not to mention...
The Petersburg Advisory Committee met last week to discuss proposals and potential changes to fishing regulations that will eventually head to the Board of Fisheries for ultimate approval. “Every three years anybody and everybody can put in a proposal to the board of fisheries to change existing regulations, add new regulations or delete regulations,” Alaska Department of Fish and Game Petersburg Area Management Biologist Troy Thynes said. “They can’t deal with state statutes but these are just the codified regulations.” The committee...
This fall’s Dungeness crab fishery preliminary harvest estimate is totaled at 975,000 pounds with 137 recorded permit holders fishing. According to Alaska Department of Fish and Game data, as of November 30, 19 percent of this year’s total fall harvest was caught this fall. During the previous ten year average, 25 percent of the annual harvest is taken in the fall. This year’s total harvest so far is a heaping 5.04 million pounds, well above the 3.78 million pound ten-year average. “With some areas still open it remains to be seen whether...
On Dec. 18 Wrangell’s advisory committee to Alaska Department of Fish and Game held the last and lengthiest of its public meetings to discuss Board of Fisheries proposals for the 2014-15 meeting cycle. This 12-person committee let the public review and discuss new finfish management proposals, providing their recommendations to the state board of Fisheries. Consulting them on management policies were Troy Thynes and Patrick Fowler from Petersburg’s ADFG office. Among the policies the committee supported, it voted ten to two in favor of cre...
