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The Department of Transportation and Public Facilities reported that the M/V Kennicott has been temporarily taken out of service. After completing its southern run to Ketchikan on November 4 it entered dry dock for repairs. "It's got a leaky seal on its port-side propeller," explained Aurah Landau, public information officer for Alaska Marine Highway System's South Coast office. She estimated repairs should take until mid-month to complete, and the ferry may return to service later next week....
October 12, 1917 – Olaf Arness made a business trip the first of the week to Ketchikan, where he was called to confer with Robert B. McClary, of the signal corps, U.S.A. Mr. McClary stated that it is essential that the government get all of the aeroplane spruce in the country, and he was anxious to learn of the condition and prospects for operating the big mill at Petersburg. Mr Arness was able to give assurance that the mill will be running next spring. October 09, 1942 – A new course in First Ade is being taught in the Senior High School und...
An Alaskan campaign to protect fish from harmful mine runoff is not anti mining, it just wants a seat at the table, and the Petersburg Assembly agreed last week. The assembly approved a resolution in support of the enforcement of the Boundary Waters Treaty in the Southeast Alaska and British Columbia transboundary region. Salmon Beyond Borders has been touring Southeast Alaska, coaxing local governments to support a resolution to protect against pollution from mines, said Melanie Brown, a coordinator with the group. Brown said the organization...
WRANGELL — Three years after a major tailings dam failure in Canada’s British Columbia province, an environmental advocacy group will be meeting with assemblies and residents in Southeast Alaska communities soon. Salmon Beyond Borders is a campaign driven by a combination of fishermen, businesses in the tourism and recreational sectors, civic groups and concerned citizens. Working with tribal counterparts on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border, the group has primarily been focused on maintaining water quality along transboundary rivers. In...
Alaska’s salmon season is winding down and while catches have made the record books in some regions, the statewide take will fall a bit short of the 204 million fish forecast. “We are within about 10 percent of the forecast, so that’s very positive and overall it’s been a pretty good season,” said Forrest Bowers, deputy director of the commercial fisheries division of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The statewide salmon catch through Friday topped 191 million. The shortfall, Bowers said, again stems from the arrival of fewer pink salmon...
WRANGELL - Wrangell emergency responders took part in a search for a missing canoer on the Stikine River earlier this month. Fire Chief Tim Buness reported a call had been received for assistance at around 5 p.m. on August 3. "We had a couple of canoers canoing by the Great Glacier," he said, on the Canadian side of the river about 10 miles from the border. The craft had turned over in the fast-moving water at around 3 p.m., spilling two men into the river. "One of the guys made it up to the...
JUNEAU – The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced today that the retention of king salmon is prohibited in all Southeast Alaska salt waters, king salmon may not be retained or possessed; any king salmon caught must be released immediately and returned to the water unharmed. These regulations will be effective 12:01 a.m. Thursday, August 10 through 11:59 p.m. Saturday, September 30, 2017. The Southeast Alaska king salmon sport fishery is managed under the directives of the Southeast Alaska King Salmon Management Plan (5 AAC 47.055). T...
One of the newest United States Coast Guard fast response cutters, the John McCormick, made a stop in Petersburg on Tuesday as part of its southeast Alaska tour of the communities it serves. "We definitely didn't want to miss you guys," Capt. Michael Moyseowicz said about Petersburg. "Being the new ship, we wanted to stop in all the communities that we serve." The cutter is 154 feet in length, it holds 16,000 gallons of fuel and can remain at 12 knots speed for 13 consecutive days. There are...
WRANGELL – In the middle of its run on television, a popular survival series on the History Channel pits a pair of Wrangell residents against the elements. Brothers Shannon and Jesse Bosdell form one team on Alone's fourth season cast. The show has seven pairs of relatives travel to the remote stretches of northern Vancouver Island, in the province of British Columbia. There each duo is separated by some miles in the wilderness, with the task of finding one another. Once reunited, the series' s...
The Gatorade Company named a Petersburg High School graduate the best track and field athlete in Alaska last week; she joins an elite group of awardees including NFL Quarterback Robert Griffin III and Olympian Hurdler Lolo Jones. Izabelle Ith is the first person from Petersburg to be awarded the 2017 Gatorade Track & Field Athlete of the Year. The award recognizes outstanding athleticism, academic achievement and character demonstrated on and off the track, according to a recent press release....
JUNEAU, Alaska – The Alaska Marine Highway System (AMHS) announced Wednesday that due to ongoing repairs the M/V Columbia will require additional time at Vigor Shipyard in Portland, Oregon. This delay will impact some passengers. Affected passengers are being notified by AMHS staff now. The M/V Malaspina is currently running in the Columbia’s place, and will continue until the Columbia is back in service on July 26. The Malaspina is a smaller vessel, therefore some passengers will not get the cabins they reserved and some vehicle res...
Ernest Ray Smith, of Issaquah, died peacefully at home on May 24, 2017. Ernie was born April 24, 1949, in Kelso, Washington, the son of Dean and Dona Smith. He was raised in Kelso, and graduated from Kelso High School and Puget Sound University, playing both basketball and baseball. In the late 1970's Ernie moved to Issaquah, Washington to work for Puget Sound Bank, finishing out his career with Columbia Bank. He served on the Issaquah City Council, coached youth sports and enjoyed being part... Full story
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) – A major earthquake in northwest British Columbia shook up communities in nearby Alaska and Yukon Territory but caused no apparent damage. Kathryn Carl, a teacher in the Alaska village of Klukwan about 40 miles (64 kilometers) from the epicenter, said the magnitude 6.2 quake shook her awake at 4:30 a.m. Carl thought her 80-pound Karelian bear dog had jumped on the bed. “She was sitting there,” Carl said. “She knew about it before we did.” A series of aftershocks, including a magnitude 6.3 quake at 6:18 a.m., kept Carl...
PETERSBURG (AP) – A group of volunteers from five southeast Alaska communities is working to document bats as part of a program aimed at combating a deadly virus caused by the animals. Volunteers from Petersburg, Juneau, Haines, Sitka and Wrangell are participating in this year’s program, which is coordinated through the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Over the last three years, the program has helped gather data to prevent White Noise Syndrome. The fungal disease has killed off more than 7 million bats in the Lower 48 since it was discover...
WRAGNGEL – When Southeast Conference meets for its annual Mid-Session Summit in Juneau later this month, among the items high on its list for discussion is the structural reform of Alaska's ferry system. Southeast Alaskans have become dependent on the state's Marine Highway System since its establishment in 1959, essentially becoming their road network into and out of the region. It is a significant economic driver for the coastal communities it services as well, with an estimated impact of j...
Entering its third full week of the session, Alaska’s Legislature continues to look at a variety of spending cuts and revenue options. On February 2, the Senate Finance Committee heard SB 21, a proposal of Sen. Bert Stedman to restructure how Permanent Fund earnings are appropriated. Currently the $56B in the fund are constitutionally protected, but the bill proposes further limiting the amount of money that can be withdrawn from the principal to 4.5 percent of market value, based on a rolling five-year average. That rate falls within the f...
JUNEAU, (AP) _ The head of the board that regulates marijuana in Alaska said he expects officials will have to address again at some point the issue of pot users consuming marijuana products in authorized stores after regulators rejected doing so last week. But Peter Mlynarik, chairman of Alaska’s Marijuana Control Board, said Monday he did not know when the board might take up the matter again. Mlynarik sided with two other board members last Thursday in rejecting rules by a 3-2 vote for allowing people to buy marijuana in Alaska’s aut...
Repairs to one of Southeast’s primary public ferries will take longer than anticipated. Alaska Marine Highway System reported the M/V Matanuska may not return to service until February 20, 10 days later than initially expected. Taken offline on January 3, the ship is currently in Ketchikan for its annual maintenance overhaul. “During that process they found some steel that needs to be replaced before it can return,” explained Department of Transportation and Public Facilities spokesperson Meadow Bailey. The delay has affected scheduling for s...
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...
JUNEAU (AP) – Canadian officials say they will take action to prevent polluted water from a decades-old mine from entering the Taku River, a key source of salmon caught in southeast Alaska. British Columbia Ministry of Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett told CoastAlaska News experts will explore different options, including plugging leaking tunnels from the defunct Tulsequah Chief Mine. The acidic water has been carrying pollutants into the Tulsequah River, which is a tributary of the Taku near Juneau. The mine hasn’t operated since 195...
Fishery advocates are hoping for the speedy delivery of a letter to state lawmakers that asks them to dust off a law pertaining to fish habitats. Title 16, the statute that outlines the responsibilities of the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game when issuing development permits that could impact those resources, has not been updated for nearly 60 years. “The law we have now, in terms of permitting projects in fish habitat, was written the year after statehood and it has not had any substantive updates since then,” said Lindsey Bloom of Juneau, one...
January Public Works rolled out the borough's highly anticipated blue cart recycling program. The borough received $820,117.61 from the annual raw fish tax. Dave Zimmerman was hired as the new Tongass National Forest Petersburg District Ranger. The assembly continued discussing the reallocation of the Kake access road funding. Representative Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins took part in a budget crisis presentation at Sons of Norway Hall. The visit was the first of many by representatives throughout the...
The start of 2017 marks the 26th year for this weekly column that targets news for and about Alaska’s seafood industry. The goal is to make all readers more aware of the economic and cultural importance of our state’s first and oldest industry. Today, Alaska fishermen and processors provide 65 percent of our nation’s wild-caught seafood; it is also Alaska’s most valuable export to more than 100 countries around the world. The seafood industry puts more people to work throughout Alaska than oil/gas, mining, timber and tourism combined. The bul...
WRANGELL – The governments of Alaska and neighboring province British Columbia initiated their first bilateral working group on transboundary mining and water quality concerns earlier this month. In a statement from his office released last week, Lieutenant Governor Byron Mallott expressed his appreciation for the meeting, which was one of the measures outlined in a statement of cooperation the two governments signed in October. The agreement was a next step in the process of addressing concerns among Southeast Alaskan communities about the e...
As Alaska’s iconic halibut fishery wraps up this week, stakeholders are holding their breath to learn if catches might ratchet up slightly again in 2017. Meanwhile, prices for hard to get shares of the halibut catch are jaw-dropping. The halibut fishery ends on Nov. 7 for nearly 2,000 longliners who hold IFQs (Individual Fishing Quotas) of halibut. The Alaska fishery will produce a catch of more than 20 million pounds if the limit is reached by the fleet. Last year, the halibut haul was worth nearly $110 million at the Alaska docks. For the f...
