Sorted by date Results 301 - 325 of 363
JUNEAU (AP) — Fisher-men in Alaska will have access to slightly more halibut this year than last. The International Pacific Halibut Commission voted Friday in Vancouver, British Columbia, for a total catch in Alaska of 21.215 million pounds, up from 19.705 million pounds in 2014. That's the first time in a decade the commission has increased the catch. The six-member panel meets annually to set the halibut catch limits from Northern California to the Bering Sea. There are three commissioners from the U.S. and three from Canada. The Alaska c...
Freezer displays at Walmart superstores in Alaska and Washington now include a new lineup of 14 Alaska seafood items. The world's largest grocer announced the expanded commitment to Alaska seafood last week. "We are so proud to bring these to our customers, and we also know how important it is to local fishermen and folks across the state," said John Forrest Ales, Director of Corporate Communications for Walmart. Company stores already carry Alaska halibut and sockeye salmon. Added to the mix...
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...
Alaska still has its share of naysayers who will quibble about the seafood industry’s importance to our great state. They dismiss the fact that fishing was Alaska’s first industry and was fish that spawned the push to statehood. “The canned salmon plants started in the 1870s and by the early 20th century, canned salmon was the largest industry and generated 80% of the territorial tax revenues. It had a position in the state economy that oil enjoys today,” said fisheries historian Bob King. The fisheries that Alaska inherited from the federal...
January More than 600 Petersburg residents signed up for the borough's recycling program. The Petersburg Land Selection Committee requested the borough pursue legislative action regarding the State's calculation of land entitlement for the Petersburg Borough after the committee's determination that the State's selection of land was inadequate. The Petersburg School Board approved a $2.3 million exterior wall renovation project for the Rae C. Stedman Elementary School. Petersburg School District... Full story
The Pacific halibut stock appears to be rising from the ashes and that bodes well for catches in some fishing regions next year. It would turn the tide of a decades-long decline that has caused halibut catches to be slashed by more than 70% in Alaska, Washington, Oregon and British Columbia. Three Alaska areas showed improvement in the annual stock surveys that range from Oregon to the Bering Sea, and could have higher catch levels in 2015. That’s according to information revealed at the International Pacific Halibut Commission’s interim mee...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) _ The world's most acidic ocean waters are found during the cold winter months in the Bering Sea, according to a new study. Researchers at Columbia University released a series of maps tracking changes in global marine activity, The Alaska Dispatch News reported The new maps, based on 40 years' worth of measurements, show how acidity in marine waters around the globe changes with the seasons. The Bering Sea has shallow waters, a broad continental shelf and ocean currents that deposit nutrients from around the world....
The Petersburg Vessel Owners Association hosted a presentation by the International Pacific Halibut Commission (IPHC) exploring long-term halibut trends. IPHC Executive Director Bruce Leaman and quantitative scientist Ian Stewart presented the findings and fielding questions from the audience. The data collected look at halibut stocks from across the Pacific, from Alaska to British Columbia, Canada and south to Washington and Oregon. Stewart said that the IPHC has 100 years worth of data on the Pacific stock of halibut, which help IPHC to exami...
Throughout history, arguments over land and water usages have run the gamut from tussles over fences with next door neighbors to shoot outs over inter-state grazing rights in the old west, but when land and water rights pit one country against another, that’s when things really get tricky. That is the situation in Southeast Alaska, where residents find themselves downstream from several massive open pit gold/copper mines being developed in bordering British Columbia. The mines are located in the headwaters of some of Southeast’s largest and...
A few issues sparked a lively discussion among assembly members and the public at Monday’s regular meeting. Four residents spoke out against the use of herbicides and pesticides to be sprayed by the state in the area. The assembly discussed the issue and then voted to draft an ordinance that would take a position on spraying in the Borough. It will be modeled after a similar ordinance from the community of Skagway. Mayor Mark Jensen said that he’s still working to secure a date for a public community meeting regarding state regulations on the...
September 26, 1914 – The boys are home: Paul Lund, Jack Hanseth, Jack Wanberg, Tony Michaelburst, Chris Lange and the cook—Paul doesn’t know his name— all jolly and popular bachelors, who have spent the summer at their logging camp, returned this week after a very successful season. The boys promise to take time easy this coming winter. Their only diversion will be to look for lasting partners. Both Lund and Hanseth are reported to be tired of this temporary partnership affair. Their many friends suspect as much. October 6, 1939 – The Chamb...
Alaska’s conservative management combined with the grace of Mother Nature are swelling the abundance of two of the state’s largest and most important fisheries. Bering Sea crab scientists and stakeholder met last week to discuss the outlook for Alaska’s biggest crab fisheries that open October 15th. The take away was that the stocks of red king crab, bairdi Tanners and snow crab all showed big increases in mature size classes, based on data from the annual summer surveys. (Only mature male crabs cans be retained in Alaska’s crab fisheries.) Tha...
By the time the fog finally dissipated Tuesday afternoon, the 56th annual Southeast Conference (SEC) was already underway at Wrangell's Nolan Center. Poor visibility prevented the appearance of the conference's opening speaker, Alaska Governor Sean Parnell, but a number of other interesting presenters took up the slack. This year's speakers included industry figures, tribal leaders, government officials, resident experts, salespeople and civic organizers. Issue for issue they addressed shared regional concerns and possible solutions. At that...
Representatives of Southeast Alaskan tribal groups will be meeting in Juneau next week to discuss regional concerns at the annual Southeast Environmental Conference in the city’s Vocational Training and Resource Center. Beginning Monday, the five-day event is being hosted by the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, in partnership with the Chilkat Indian Village, Craig Tribal Association, Douglas Indian Association, Organized Village of Kasaan, Petersburg Indian Association and Sitka Tribe of Alaska. The purpose o...
More than 100 researchers and three dozen projects are underway to find clues as to why Alaska’s Chinook salmon production has declined since 2007. The ambitious effort marks the start of a state-backed five year, $30 million Chinook Salmon Research Initiative that includes 12 major river systems from Southeast Alaska to the Yukon. And while it will be years before the project yields definitive data, the scientists have pinned down some early findings. “It’s not the fresh water production of the juvenile Chinook that is the reason this decli...
Efforts by the Canadian agency Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) to relocate salmon across a barrier created by a landslide in late May are helping sockeye salmon reach escapement goals. DFO began relocating sockeye and Chinook salmon via helicopter across the barrier in early July. As of July 20, nearly 4,000 sockeye and over 1,000 large Chinook salmon were successfully transported over the slide area and released into the upper Tahltan River. Water levels in the Tahtan River had receded by the end of July making it possible for “a s...
Seafood is by far Alaska’s top export and as it heads overseas, global politics play a big role in making sales sink or swim. That dynamic took center stage last week when Russia banned imports of foods for one year from the US, Canada, Europe, Norway and Australia in retaliation for sanctions imposed due to its aggressive actions in Ukraine. It is a direct hit to Alaska, which last year exported nearly 20 million pounds of seafood to Russia, valued at more than $60 million. The primary product it hurts is pink and chum salmon roe; Russia is a...
Breached mine tailings dams be damned! As millions of Fraser River sockeye salmon head for spawning beds polluted by a brew of metal toxins oozing from the Mount Polley gold/copper mine disaster in British Columbia, Republican candidates vying for US Senate want environmental regulators to butt out of Alaska’s mining development decisions. The three men hoping to unseat Mark Begich faced off last week for a Rural Alaska Republican Candidates forum hosted by KYUK/Bethel. To questions posed by moderator Ben Matheson, candidates Joe Miller, M...
The Kerr-Sulphurets-Mitchell (KSM) Mine being proposed in Canada's British Columbia province is nearing its final stages, with the fourth and final comment period on the project's environmental assessment coming to a close Aug. 20. The first of five major mining sites planned for development along transboundary waters, the sheer scale of the KSM and the rapidity of development in the region have been causing consternation among Alaska's Native communities, fishing and travel industry associations, and environmental groups. The British Columbia... Full story
It came as no surprise when the first price postings last week tanked for Bristol Bay sockeye salmon to $1.20 a pound, with an extra 15 cents for chilled fish. That compares to a base price of $1.50 a pound last year. The Bristol Bay catch topped 28 million reds by Friday, 11 million more than projected, and the fish were still coming. (Alaska’s total sockeye salmon catch as of July 18 was over 37 million and counting.) Demand for the fish is strong by both foreign and U.S. buyers, but the downward press on prices stems from lots of c...
Canadian officials are airlifting Chinook and sockeye salmon over a landslide that caused a barrier to salmon passage in the Tahltan River, a tributary of the Stikine. Steve Gotch, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) director for the Yukon and Northwestern British Columbia, said the landslide occurred about a half mile up the Tahltan on May 20. The river is roughly 120 miles upstream of the Stikine, but the salmon that swim up it provide harvests for Southeast Alaskan and Canadian commercial and...
July 11, 1914 – Henry Morgan, a rose grower, formerly located at 4263 Morgan street, has just returned from a four weeks tour of investigation to several Alaska cities and he expects to return to settle in Haines, Alaska as soon as he can get together a satisfactory supply of live stock. Mr. Morgan visited Sitka, Ketchikan, Petersburg, Juneau and Haines looking for attractive farm sites. July 12, 1974 Celebrating Pilot's 40th Year – Beautiful clear skies, calm water and dozens of Petersburg spectators paid tribute to the sleek and spacious new...
Uncertainty best sums up the mood as fishermen and processors await the world’s biggest sockeye salmon run at Bristol Bay. In fact, it’s being called the riskiest season in recent memory in the 2014 Sockeye Market Analysis, a biannual report done by the McDowell Group for the fishermen-run Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association. As presaged by buyer pushback at seafood trade shows earlier this year at Boston and Brussels, for the first time since 2010 the starting price for the first sockeyes from Copper River took a $0.50/lb dip...
A hook setter was killed last Thursday at the South Mitkof timber sale site near Banana Point. Mark Debates, 51, had just finished hooking cables onto logs near the camp at 28 mile when a tree fell onto him after the helicopter transferring the logs to a barge flew away. “He was there with a partner who witnessed it,” said Beth Ipsen, Alaska State Trooper spokesperson. “The helicopter was flying off when the top of a tree broke off and fell on him. His partner said he heard a crack and saw the treetop fall.” Ipsen said there’s no indicatio...
