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Amongst the sounds of churning conveyor belts, rolling carts, and running rivers, a high pitched steam whistle blares, cutting through the noise-its time for mug up. Coffee drips and silverware clatters with plates as tired workers gather for a moment of respite. With eyes closed, hearing the symphony of industrial noise one might think they had walked inside an operating Alaskan cannery, but upon opening they would instead find a faithful recreation of cannery life inside the Alaska State... Full story
After 56 years of service in the Alaska Marine Highway System fleet and almost three years tied up at a Ketchikan dock, unused and in need of costly repairs, the Malaspina is headed to another career as a privately owned floating museum and employee housing. Plans also call for using the ship as a classroom for maritime industry jobs. The state last week accepted $128,250 for the 408-foot-long passenger and vehicle ferry from the recently formed Ketchikan company M/V Malaspina. The company is a subsidiary of Ward Cove Dock Group, owned by John...
The arrival of herring signals the start of Alaska’s spring fisheries and this year’s commercial catch limits from each of the three main areas are record breakers. But much of the catch will go unharvested — there is no market. Combined harvests from three prime producing areas total 118,346 tons, or nearly 237 million pounds. The limit for the Sitka Sound harvest in late March is set at over 45,164 tons, followed the first days of April at Kodiak where a harvest of 8,075 tons is allowed. Alaska’s largest roe herring fishery at Togiak in Brist...
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...
Haines-Lynn Canal fishermen might have an opportunity to diversify if a Juneau-based fishing charter and lodge owner is right about his hunch that a viable commercial squid fishery could exist in Southeast. Richard Yamada, who's been operating fishing charters for 40 years, has been looking for ways to reduce the impacts on his business from king salmon declines. He speculates that an observed influx of magister squid in the northern inside passage might be one factor in salmon survival. About 1...
Superior Court Judge William Carey is set to retire later this month after finishing his final trials in Petersburg and Ketchikan. Carey has served as a superior court judge for the area since 2009 after being appointed to the position by Governor Sarah Palin and in that time has presided over trials across Southeast Alaska. Originally from Massachusetts, Carey earned his bachelor's degree in political science from Brown University in 1976 and a law degree from the University of Denver in 1980....
The Supporting Health Awareness and Resiliency Education (SHARE) Coalition hosted a Community Café Saturday afternoon on Zoom which centered on the future of child care in Petersburg. The meeting gave members of the community, including representatives from the Petersburg Borough Assembly, Petersburg Medical Center, and the Petersburg School Board, an opportunity to hear about the challenges facing local child care providers and to discuss ways to support children, providers, and parents who...
WRANGELL - A Wrangell company that makes bath and body care products has nothing to do with fish, but that's OK because it won this year's beyond-the-plate award at the Alaska Symphony of Seafood competition. Waterbody won for its Deep Blue Sea Bath Soak, which counts Pacific sea salt and Alaska bull kelp among its ingredients. Angie Flickinger started the business in 2015 as Gathered and Grown Botanicals. The idea began when she wanted to give handcrafted soap as a gift. She rebranded in 2020 a...
Orin Pierson will assume general manager duties at the Petersburg Pilot effective October 1, according to co-publishers Ron and Anne Loesch. He will oversee all business, advertising, production, writing and office supply operations at the newspaper. Loesch will continue writing opinion pieces while his wife Anne will train Pierson to perform business office duties such as billing and accounts payable. Pierson worked for the newspaper between August 2006 and June 2016 when he left to work for KF...
Once again, Alaska legislators have gaveled back into special session because Gov. Mike Dunleavy wants to show his constituents that he believes in one thing above all else: The largest Permanent Fund dividend in state history. He’s like a wide-eyed kid in the candy shop, only he’s got a record-setting Permanent Fund balance jingling in his pockets and wants to spend some of it to buy chocolates for everyone in the state. Talk about a dangerous sweet tooth that can only decay the future growth potential of the state’s only savings accou...
WRANGELL - Aquatic farming in Alaska could be a big industry, and completely sustainable. That's according to Wrangell's Julie Decker, executive director of Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation, a nonprofit that focuses on research and development for the seafood industry. Shellfish and seaweed farming are the only types of aquatic farming permitted in Alaska. Mariculture includes saltwater farming, differing from aquaculture which "farms" in freshwater. Mariculture development, if managed...
The first 100 out-of-state health care workers have started arriving in Alaska to help at medical facilities overwhelmed with record patient counts due to surging COVID-19 infections. The state health department has contracted to bring on 470 health care workers, including about 300 nurses, to help the strained workforce. Alaska is using $87 million in federal funds to cover the costs. The first health care personnel reported to the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage for orientation on Tuesday. The contractor said the remaining nurses,...
Breakthrough COVID-19 cases found in Alaska April 30 Between Feb. 1 and March 31, Alaska Department of Health and Social Services identified 152 positive cases of COVID-19 among people in the state who were fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to a report from DHSS. About 74 percent of the vaccine breakthrough cases, or 112 individuals, were among people who had received the Pfizer vaccine, according to the report. Thirty-eight percent of the breakthrough cases had received the Moderna... Full story
The Petersburg School District has hired seven new teachers for this upcoming school year as the schools seek in person instruction under the new COVID-19 protocols. Dustin Crump will be teaching Spanish and PE at Petersburg High School and Computer Science at Mitkof Middle School. He is originally from North Carolina and attended the University of North Carolina at Wilmington where he earned a bachelor of arts in Spanish. His wife is from Petersburg and after their wedding, they moved to...
August 19, 1921 That the salmon pack of Alaska is almost a failure is indicated by reports being received from all sections. The Petersburg cannery and one cannery in the Ketchikan section are about the only ones reporting any prospect of securing their contemplated pack. At the local cannery of the Mitkof Island Packing Company 75,000 cases had been packed on Thursday night and the fish are still coming strong. The management expects to secure 120,000 cases this season. August 16, 1946 “Hello Thornquist? This is Ed Locken.” And with the exc...
The Petersburg School District has hired seven new teachers for this upcoming school year as the schools seek in person instruction under the new COVID-19 protocols. A few of the new teachers are returning to their roots in Petersburg including Hannah Smith who will be teaching science at Mitkof Middle School. Smith went to Gonzaga University before receiving her masters at Montana State in science education. "I grew up here actually, graduated from Petersburg High School. My parents and my...
Bycatch gives Alaska's otherwise stellar fisheries management its biggest black eye. The term refers to unwanted sea creatures taken in trawls, pots, lines and nets when boats are going after other targeted catches. Bycatch is the bane of existence for fishermen, seafood companies and policy makers alike, yet few significant advances have been found to mitigate the problem. A simple fix has recently shed light on a solution. "Ten underwater LED lights can be configured to light up different...
James "Jim" Albert Bodding joined his parents on July 29, 2021 after a valiant battle with lung cancer. He was born in Ketchikan, Alaska on August 8th,1948 to Gerald A. "Bud" Bodding and Dorothy E. "Betty" Bodding (Hofstad). His first love was the sea where he spent much of his life searching for the next productive fishing grounds. The sea was in Jim's veins from the age of 5 when he became hopelessly addicted after catching his first coho salmon on a baitless treble hook while boating with his... Full story
Alaska’s salmon landings have passed the season’s midpoint and by August 7 the statewide catch had topped 116 million fish. State managers are calling for a projected total 2021 harvest of 190 million salmon, a 61% increase over 2020. Most of the salmon being caught now are pinks with Prince William Sound topping 35 million humpies, well over the projection of 25 million. Pink salmon catches at Kodiak remained sluggish at just over three million so far out of a forecast calling for over 22 million. Southeast was seeing a slight uptick with pin...
A lease the United States Forest Service holds on a plot of land near the 8 mile marker of Mitkof Highway that was once the site of an experimental fur farm will be ending in June 2022, ending a 43-year occupation of the site. District Ranger Ted Sandhofer said the decision to end the lease wasn't the Forest Service's, but the University of Alaska's, who holds the title of the property. The local Forest Service activities haven't been as prominent on the site since the early 1990s when its tree...
Arnold Martin Enge, a lifelong Petersburg gillnetter who plied the waters of Southeast Alaska for six decades and was a respected advocate for his fellow fishermen, died at home on Sing Lee Alley in June. He was 73. Born into Petersburg's oldest pioneer family, Arnold followed his Norwegian ancestors' path into commercial fishing, first skippering a gillnet boat at age 17 and only pausing for a brief stint in college and a longer one in the Navy. He was the dean of the Petersburg gillnet fleet,... Full story
Abbey Hardie was named to the Chancellor’s List attaining a grade point average of 4.0 during the Spring 2021 semester at the University of Alaska Southeast. Andrea Burt was named to the Dean’s List for the 2021 spring semester at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas. Gillian Wittstock was named to the Dean’s List at Gonzaga University for the 2021 spring semester....
Alaskan interest in growing kelp continues to outpace that of shellfish, based on applications filed during the annual window that runs from January through April. The number of 2021applicants dropped to just seven, reversing a steady upward trend that reached 16 last year, likely due to a "wait and see" approach stemming from the pandemic. "We had people whose personal situations changed because of COVID. They became homeschooling parents, things like that, where they can no longer dedicate...
May 20, 1921 Fire on Tuesday of this week damaged the home of Mr. and Mrs. Earl Ohmer to the extent of about $25. The fire originated from a spark lighting on the dry roof, but it was extinguished soon after the arrival of the department. Mrs. Ohmer received quite a scare as the baby was asleep in the upper part of the house at the time when she became aware of the fire and rushed up to get the child. The whole upper part of the house was filled with smoke and in a few minutes more the child would probably have been asphyxiated. May 17, 1946 Ho...
When Lydia Martin got her admission letter from Columbia University, she didn't open it right away. She had just been turned down by two other universities and couldn't take anymore disappointment. Then the following day during first period, she decided to read the university's response which told her she got in. "It was really surprising," said Martin, who will be entering the Ivy League university in New York as an earth science major. "I had been holding out a bit of hope to get in obviously....
