Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 31
With a new stretch of undersea cable complete, Alaska Power & Telephone is set to expand its fiber optic broadband internet service to more communities on Prince of Wales Island. The utility announced Nov. 12 that it had finished a $39 million undersea fiber optic cable that connects Ketchikan with Hollis and Coffman Cove. The new 101-mile-long SEALink South cable runs west of Ketchikan and splits into a Y near Kasaan Arm to reach the two communities. The project is intended to strengthen high-speed fiber optic internet access across Prince of...
Alaska seaweed farmers and oyster growers mingled with professors, tech industry representatives, state and federal government staff, bankers and consultants who converged at Ketchikan’s Ted Ferry Civic Center for the third-ever international Seagriculture USA conference, the first such conference in Alaska. All eyes of the 190-some conference participants earlier this month were on the promise of developing a profitable seaweed industry in Southeast Alaska, with people traveling to Ketchikan from California, Maine, Canada, The Netherlands, N...
Three young humpback whales were found dead off the west coast of Prince of Wales Island in just two weeks at the end of August. One subadult female was found on Aug. 22 in waters south of El Capitan, while a subadult female and a young male were found in waters near Craig on Aug. 30 and Sept. 2, respectively. On Aug. 30, longtime Craig resident whale-watcher Kathy Peavey heard about one of the whales, the subadult female that was found dead in Squam Bay north of Craig, from Michelle Dutro, an Alaska State Sea Grant fellow who helps monitor...
Trollers shoved off from docks across Southeast Alaska over the weekend, following an announcement from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game of a very limited 10-day commercial opening for kings. The brief window opened Sept. 1 and was scheduled to close Sept. 10, with a limit of 12 kings per troller. The department said it expects trollers will harvest the remaining Southeast allocation of about 4,000 fish. That’s what remains of the commercial net fisheries share of Southeast kings, as seine fisheries have wrapped up and gillnet fisheries a...
Saxman, a community of about 400 people just south of the city of Ketchikan, will build 14 affordable housing units over the next year. In partnership with the Ketchikan Gateway Borough, Saxman will use $4.5 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds distributed through the Alaska Housing Finance Corp. to develop four apartment buildings — three fourplexes and one duplex — containing a total of 14 two-bedroom dwellings for low-income tenants. The units could be open for occupancy by the end of 2025. AHFC, a public corporation and independent sta...
Heavy fishing on chinook salmon by sport fishermen — including nonresident charter customers — is taking away fishing time from Southeast Alaska’s commercial troll fleet this summer. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced Aug. 6 that trollers in August and September will likely lose out on the remainder of the summer troll fishery allocation for chinook because sport fishermen across Southeast are on track to exceed their summer 2024 allocation by about 14,000 chinook, and because of a regulation change that the department imple...
A federal judge on July 8 sentenced two members of a Washington state family for selling more than $1 million of Filipino-made products which were marketed as authentic “Alaska Native produced artwork.” The scheme involved two Ketchikan shops for about five years, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Alaska. The family members were ordered to pay restitution, complete home confinement and community service, and write apology letters for violating the federal Indian Arts and Crafts Act (IACA). Glenda Tiglao Rodrigo, 46, w...
An emerging seafood company is preparing to purchase its first loads of pink and chum salmon from a handful of seine boats in Metlakatla this summer while also building a high-tech floating freezer barge at a Washington shipyard that the company plans to operate in Southeast Alaska next year. Circle Seafoods, which was founded by Pat Glaab, Charlie Campbell and Eren Shultz, is renting out a portion of the Metlakatla Indian Community’s Annette Island Packing Co. plant this year while starting up a statewide operation that’s geared at buying and...
Commercial trollers started their summer season Monday, July 1, targeting a catch of approximately 66,700 chinook salmon in an opener that will be closed by emergency order when catch estimates approach that harvest target. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced last week that trollers are expected to hit the limit this weekend, after just six or seven days of fishing. Last year, Southeast trollers brought in about 85,000 king salmon from July 1 to July 12, about 8,000 fish over the target for the first opener of the season. The...
The Metlakatla Indian Community’s Annette Island Packing Co. has reopened after a five-year closure. About 100 people gathered on June 14 to start the summer fishing season with a blessing of the fleet and to celebrate the return to work of the seafood processor which has operated in the community for more than 100 years. AIP was founded as a cannery in the late 1800s and operated year-round until 2019, when the plant reduced its operations due to rising costs and other liabilities, according to a report from the Metlakatla Indian Community. M...
Southeast commercial purse seine fishermen are preparing for a summer season with no confidence they will earn a good price for the pink and chum they catch. The Southeast seine fishery opened with a one-day pink salmon fishing opportunity on Sunday in areas near Sitka, with more widespread openings to come. The Department of Fish and Game has forecast a “traditional” fishery harvest of 19.2 million pink salmon by commercial seiners this year, not counting the fish netted in terminal harvest areas near hatchery release sites. That would be an...
People in Craig on June 4 found antisemitic pamphlets packaged with dry beans inside of clear plastic bags distributed in yards and driveways across town. Bob Claus, who lives in Craig, said he found four antisemitic flyers while he was out for a walk along Third Street and Beach Road in west Craig. Claus said the flyers were packaged inside plastic bags that contained “different versions of what looks like professionally produced flyers about different subjects … they'd been thrown in several driveways.” “One is about Jewish control of the...
Water is warming up at the Klawock River Hatchery on Prince of Wales Island, a Southern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association facility that fertilizes and incubates 5 million coho eggs each year using Klawock River water. Hatchery manager Troy Liske said water flowing by the hatchery in 2023 was warmer by an average of 3.6 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit than in years past. Warmer water temperatures are speeding up the salmon development process and changing the dynamics of hatchery work, which could pose future challenges, Liske said. SSRAA has...
A U.S. Senate committee last week advanced legislation to create Native corporations in Wrangell, Ketchikan, Petersburg, Tenakee and Haines — if it can win Senate and House approval in the next 12 months. The five “landless Natives” communities were left out of the 1971 Alaska Native Lands Claims Settlement Act, which created regional, urban and village corporations across the state. Legislation to grant lands to the five communities has been introduced to Congress multiple times over the decades, but this year is the first time any landl...
The Alaska Board of Fisheries voted 4-2 against requiring in-season management to more effectively hold the sport fishery chinook catch within its harvest limit. The board voted on Friday, Dec. 1, at its meeting in Homer, which was primarily devoted to Southcentral fisheries issues. The controversial proposal would have tightened in-season management of the Southeast chinook catch to better guard against resident and nonresident sport fishermen exceeding their share of the overall sport and commercial harvest. The proposal’s intent was to b...
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced it expects Southeast Alaska commercial fishermen next year will harvest around 19 million pink salmon — close to an average number based on 63 years of commercial harvest data collected since Alaska became a state. The department’s forecast, released in November, predicts a pink salmon catch of between 12 million and 32 million fish. Pink salmon harvest varies greatly from odd-numbered years to even-numbered years, and the commercial catch in the 10 most recent even years has averaged 21 mil...
Subsistence representatives for Southeast have weighed in on a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration planning process that is working to identify potential sites for commercial seaweed, kelp and shellfish farms in Alaska waters. In its comments to NOAA, the Southeast Alaska Subsistence Regional Advisory Council stated its concern that additional mariculture sites not conflict with subsistence harvest areas. NOAA is tasked with identifying 10 Aquaculture Opportunity Areas in the U.S. by 2025, in an effort to advance domestic...
A team in Coffman Cove helped set free two killer whales that had been trapped in Barnes Lake on northeast Prince of Wales Island since mid-August for six weeks, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The orcas presumably stranded themselves by chasing prey into the lake during a high-tide cycle. Transient, or Bigg’s, killer whales are a genetically and culturally distinct population of orcas that live in the Pacific Northwest and feed primarily on marine mammals, according to NOAA. Barnes Lake has two entrances f...
Every Monday morning, Jenn Tucker harvests 3,600 living plants from one of the shipping containers that serves as a hydroponic farm and fills piles of crates for delivery across Ketchikan. Tucker is the farm manager for Outpost Agriculture, a nonprofit that set up its first hydroponic farm in Ketchikan last year and is eyeing development of similar, controlled environment agriculture operations across Alaska. The Outpost farm building on North Tongass Highway in Ketchikan is an assemblage of eig...
An insidious, invasive crab is multiplying in numbers on the southern shores of Annette Island. As of Friday, Aug. 11, Metlakatla Indian Community teams have recovered 1,622 invasive green crabs from Tamgas Harbor, a large, open bight in the southern end of the island, as well as from Muskeg Beach just outside and west of Tamgas. The invasive green crab is a destructive predator that can change and degrade habitat and threaten native species. The crab adapts well to most ecosystems, and has boomed on the coast of Oregon, Washington and British...
Southeast Alaska commercial seine fishermen are blazing past pink salmon catch estimates that the Alaska Department of Fish and Game predicted for the summer season. Fish and Game in May forecast that seine fishermen would harvest about 19 million pink salmon across Southeast this summer. Bo Meredith, who manages Ketchikan-area commercial fisheries for Fish and Game, said on Aug. 4 that seiners already have likely caught 19 million since the season opened in early July, with more than a month of pink season still to come. The Southeast seine...
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has announced a second opportunity for commercial trollers to catch chinook salmon in Southeast after a smaller-than-average troll fleet took about 85,000 chinook during an initial opener July 1-12. Troll fishermen can target an additional 10,000 chinook during a one-day fishery that will open from 12:01 a.m. through 11:59 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 11, the department announced on Monday, Aug. 7. The department originally had scheduled the one-day opening for Saturday, but a forecast of high winds pushed...
In the new online video series "Harvest" that recently won national television awards, residents of Prince of Wales Island show the entire process for harvesting and preparing beach greens, gumboots, seaweed, seal, herring eggs, fireweed honey, Indian cheese, dry fish, newspaper fish and stink heads. The series' 10 videos range from four to 15 minutes long and include gathering partners sitting in a patch of sea asparagus, floating over kelp forests. Another shows expert hands cutting seal and...
A federal judge has denied the state of Alaska’s request for a stay of an order that could close down the Southeast king salmon troll fishery this summer and winter. The last option to open the fishery this season is another appeal. After the judge’s ruling last Friday, the state immediately filed a request with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for a stay that would — if granted — allow trollers to work while the National Marine Fisheries Service attempts to better justify the fishery, as required by the judge’s May 2 order. “The stat...
The Inter-Island Ferry Authority on May 24 welcomed its one millionth passenger since the service began operating between Ketchikan and Prince of Wales Island in 2002. As passengers arrived for the Prince of Wales ferry’s 3:30 p.m. run from Ketchikan to Hollis, Inter-Island Ferry manager Ron Curtis stood at the loading ramp, keeping track of passengers to figure out when the all-time passenger count hit a million. At 999,999 he announced: “It will be the next person to get on the ferry.” Chance Headley approached the purser's station with...
