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JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — The U.S. Coast Guard has suspended the search for a 40-year-old woman who fell overboard off a cruise ship in Alaska’s Inside Passage. The Coast Guard ended the effort Tuesday after searching for the woman for about nine hours, Coast Guard Petty Office Ali Blackburn said. The search was conducted by boat and a helicopter in the waters near Eldred Rock in Lynn Canal, which is about 20 miles (30 kilometers) west of the state capital, Juneau. The captain of the cruise ship Celebrity Solstice reported the missing woman at 3 a...
The largest of the state ferries, the 499-passenger Columbia, was still listed as inactive on the Transportation Department website as of Monday, with no indication it will go back to work this summer as was planned nine months ago. Last August, the department’s draft summer 2022 schedule included the ship “penciled in” to run May 11 through Sept. 14, with weekly sailings to Southeast from Bellingham, Washington, “pending crew availability.” The run would have included weekly stops in Wrangell. After months of nationwide advertising for crew,...
Global supply chain shortages and delays have extended past grocery stores, car dealers and electronics to the Alaska Marine Highway System. The state ferry Kennicott was delayed coming out of winter overhaul. Instead of returning to service last week, as had been scheduled, the ship left Ketchikan on Tuesday for a two-week trip to Juneau, Yakutat and then into the Gulf of Alaska before sailing into Bellingham, Washington, to fully start its summer runs. The Kennicott's scheduled return to servi...
April 21, 1922 A reef of gold bearing ore several hundred feet in width and over five miles in length, which runs from four to twelve dollars in values on the surface, has been discovered at Muddy River by Martin Dahl and John Loseth. The ledge lays along the water and extends from Horn Cliff in a northerly direction. The discovery was made accidentally by Martin Dahl last fall and samples were sent to Juneau for assay. The returns showed the good values could be secured and active prospecting was continued throughout the winter. The ledge has...
With more than 260 would-be ferry passengers stuck on a waitlist for travel out of Bellingham, Washington, and sailings full until late July, the Alaska Marine Highway System has scheduled an extra run of the Matanuska to bring the people and their vehicles to the state. The additional sailing is scheduled to leave Bellingham on May 25. There was time in the ship’s schedule, which ferry management had been holding open in hopes the Matanuska could restart service that week to Prince Rupert, British Columbia, after being gone from the C...
The Alaska Marine Highway System has been hoping since last August to bring back the Columbia to service this year after an almost three-year absence, but with the start of the summer schedule only weeks away the state has not announced a decision on the ship. The Columbia's summer return is contingent on hiring enough crew to replace staff that were laid off, retired, quit or moved to other ships since the state's largest ferry was pulled out of service in the fall of 2019. "We're pouring a...
The state Board of Fisheries' decision last month to move the Southeast commercial shrimp pot fishery from a fall start to spring means there will be no harvest this year. The Department of Fish and Game told the board that a spring harvest could help build up the region's shrimp stocks, which are in decline, by taking fewer egg-laden shrimp than in the fall. Wrangell shrimpers, however, are questioning the wisdom of the switch, which they said could hurt marketing efforts and reduce the value...
Mark and Sue McCallum, along with Pamela Mae Post, happily announce the marriage of Tess Walther and Ian McCallum. The happy couple eloped on April 1, 2022 in New York, New York. Tess is a doctoral student in Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and Ian is a Project Engineer Diver at Marine Solutions Inc. They will reside in New York City....
March 24, 1922 What about the tide flats in front of town? It is a certainty that work will start on the dredging of Wrangell Narrows this year and will be running full blast by next season. Thousands of cubic yards of sand will be pumped from the Narrows directly in front of the town. What will be done with it? Will it be used to fill in the unsightly tide flats and convert the useless property into level building land or will it be allowed to run out into Frederick Sound? If the waterfront property owners will get together and ask the...
A state Department of Transportation official told legislators that the ferry system is "burning out our crew" with lots of overtime amid staff shortages, and that the problem jeopardizes tentative plans to bring back the Columbia to service in Southeast for the first time since fall 2019. The Alaska Marine Highway System as of March 16 was down 125 employees from the minimum needed to staff its full online summer schedule plus the addition of the Columbia, according to a department...
Thomas Andrew (Tommie) Willis, age 31, of Juneau, Alaska passed away unexpectedly on Monday, March 1, 2022. Born in Juneau, Alaska on October 25, 1990, Tommie was raised in Petersburg before moving to Columbia, Missouri. He returned to Juneau during high school. Tommie was a state champion swimmer with his beloved Viking Swim Club. His relay team still holds the state record. He was an active boy scout, gifted and talented student, enjoyed playing drums, attended Petersburg Presbyterian Church,... Full story
State ferry system and Transportation Department officials plan to gather this week in Ketchikan to consider options for fulfilling the advertised summer schedule amid a continuing shortage of onboard crew. The department failed to meet its self-imposed timeline of hiring enough workers by March 1 to ensure that the Columbia on May 1 would return to service for the first time since fall 2019. The Alaska Marine Highway System had said it needed to hire at least 166 new employees to staff up its fleet — a gap of about one-quarter of its total aut...
March means more fishing boats are out on the water with the start of the Pacific halibut and sablefish (black cod) fisheries this past Sunday, followed by Alaska’s first big herring fishery at Sitka Sound. For halibut, the coastwide catch from waters ranging from the West Coast states to British Columbia to the far reaches of the Bering Sea was increased by 5.7% this year to 41.22 million pounds. Alaska always gets the lion’s share of the commercial halibut harvest, which for 2022 is 21.51 million pounds, a nearly 10% increase. Exp...
The commercial Pacific halibut fishing period is set to begin on March 6 as determined during the 98th session of the International Pacific Halibut Commission and will last until December 7, 2022. This season, the overall Total Constant Exploitation Yield (TCEY) limit was increased by 5.7% compared to last year, bringing the 2022 limit to 41.22 million pounds. For all areas in the United States, the total 2022 limit of 33.66 million pounds is up 5.2% from 2021. The largest percentage increase...
State Transportation Department officials recently told legislators the ferry system needed to quickly hire at least 166 new crew in order to meet minimum staffing levels for this summer’s schedule starting in May. “Staffing goals for the summer season will not be met at current recruitment rates,” the department reported in its presentation to the House Transportation Committee on Feb. 15. Insufficient staffing could result in scaling back ferry service plans. About 350 new hires would be even better, covering vacancies due to sick leave...
State ferry management said they are working to be more responsive to community and passenger concerns, including reconsidering the use of "dynamic pricing," where fares increase as ships fill up on popular sailings. No one likes dynamic pricing, Katherine Keith, the Transportation Department's change management director, told legislators last week. The pricing structure is similar to airlines, hotels and rental cars, where bookings on popular routes and travel days can cost significantly more,...
Beckett Buchan Thain is Petersburg's First baby of 2022. He was born on February 2nd, 2022 at 9:30 pm at Columbia Memorial Hospital in Astoria, Oregon to Petersburg residents Lauren and Tyler Thain, joining big sister Libby Jo. He weighed 8 lbs 8 oz. and was 20.5 inches long....
Unless the Alaska Marine Highway System can recruit enough workers by March 1 to restaff the unused Columbia, officials said the largest vessel in the fleet would remain tied to the dock for a third summer in a row. "Management is doing everything we can" to recruit and staff up, Katherine Keith, the ferry system's newly hired change management director, told legislators last week. As of the first week of January, the state ferry system was short more than 350 workers - about half of the...
The U.S. grows less than one-100th of 1% of the world’s $6 billion seaweed market, but Alaska has the goods to grow into a major contributor. A new report assesses the pros and cons of six communities as locations for seaweed processing facilities to assist companies interested in operating in Alaska. It was compiled by McKinley Research Group for the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation, which has played a central role in keeping Alaska seaweed in the resource development spotlight. The six study communities were evaluated based on three c...
Though they say the level of funding for the state ferry system in Gov. Mike Dunleavy's budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 is adequate, coastal legislators don't like that the governor wants to use one-time federal money to pay the bills, eliminating almost 95% of state funding. Their fear is that when the federal dollars from last year's $1.2 trillion infrastructure spending plan run out, so too will adequate ferry service. "Those federal dollars were meant to augment state money, no...
Wow, there is a lot of fishing going on across Alaska! Salmon is the heart of Alaska’s seafood industry but winter is when the fishing action really begins. Hundreds of boats are out on the water on the first day of each new year, beginning a predictable rhythm for the seafood industry as millions of pounds of fish begin to cross the docks around the clock at Alaska’s working waterfronts. Here’s a sampler: Starting January 1 boats drop pots and baited lines for cod, rockfish and other whitefish in the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea. Alask...
I was nineteen when I first rode the M/V Columbia up to Petersburg, back in 2003, and I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I parked myself on the ferry's starboard side and watched the landscape grow wilder the further north we sailed. The scenery was more spectacular than anything I had ever seen: Mountains plunged into the sea and mist ribboned through forested shores. As we passed through the Wrangell Narrows the trees seemed close enough to reach out and touch. A passenger near me... Full story
January The assembly approved of a COVID-19 dashboard which tracked cases in the community. Local businesses received a total of $15.08 million in aid in the first round of COVID-19 aid released through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. PMC vaccinated approximately 350 residents aged 65 or older at a vaccine drive in the community gym. PMC was given permission by the borough to apply for a second PPP loan totaling $1.8 million. PMC applied and received a loan of...
December 30, 1921 The corner of the heating plant at the Petersburg Hospital caught fire last Friday night about 10 o’clock, the flames being caused by sparks from the furnace. Dr. A.B. Jones was in the building attending a patient and noticed the flames. He ran out and extinguished them with buckets of water without assistance. Practically no damage was done. Another fire last Friday evening in the house occupied by Charles Birdsell and family caused considerable excitement. The alarm was rung at 5 o’clock and by the time the department arrive...
Pacific halibut stock appears to be on an upswing and could result in increased catches for most regions in 2022. At the interim meeting of the International Pacific Halibut Commission last week, scientists gave an overview of the summer setline survey that targets nearly 2,000 stations over three months. The Pacific resource is modeled as a single stock extending from northern California to the Aleutian Islands and Bering Sea, including all inside waters through British Columbia and Alaska. The survey showed that coastwide combined numbers...
