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The U.S. Department of Agriculture will purchase about 50 million pounds of Alaska seafood to use in national food and nutrition-assistance programs, state officials said on Feb. 20. The seafood purchase is to benefit needy children and adults and school lunches, said the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, which announced the department’s plans. The purchases are authorized through a federal law which allows the Agriculture Department to buy surplus food products, and through the department’s Commodity Credit Corp., a government entity cre...
CASPAR BEACH, Calif. - A welding hammer strapped to her wrist, Joy Hollenback slipped on blue fins and swam into the churning, chilly Pacific surf one fall morning to do her part to save Northern California's vanishing kelp forests. Hollenback dove into the murky depths toward the seafloor. There, she spotted her target: voracious, kelp-devouring purple urchins. Within seconds she smashed 20 to smithereens. "If you're angry, it's a cathartic way to get it all out," Hollenback joked. "It's...
I’ve never seen market conditions as bad as they are now,” Doug Vincent-Lang, commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, told a conference of Southeast business, community and municipal government leaders last week. “Last year we said we reached rock bottom,” Jeremy Woodrow, executive director of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, said of low prices, weak markets and reluctant consumers. But then he added, “we’ve scraped off more levels,” reaching deeper to the bottom. All of the participants in the fisheries panel discuss...
Despite the rough weather, Southeast trollers recorded a record chinook salmon catch for January in the winter troll fishery, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The January catch totaled 7,200 kings, well above the previous record of 4,800 in 2016. “I knew it was good but didn’t realize we were that far above the previous high,” said Grant Hagerman, Fish and Game Southeast troll biologist in Sitka. But “it’s not all roses,” Hagerman said. The fish are smaller on average, and the prices are below the five-year average. “We’re h...
Southeast salmon fishermen say they weren’t surprised by the news that the nonprofit Wild Fish Conservancy has launched a fresh effort that could shut down Alaska’s king salmon fisheries. Last year, Southeast Alaska king salmon troll fisheries were threatened by a lawsuit from the Washington state-based organization in the name of protecting an important food source for Puget Sound killer whales. The latest threat comes from the conservancy’s announcement that it will seek listing of Alaska king salmon under the protection of the federal Endang...
Successive marine heat waves appear to have doomed much of the chum salmon swimming in the ocean waters off Alaska in the past year and probably account for the scarcities that have strained communities along Western Alaska rivers in recent years, a newly published study found. In the much-warmer water temperatures that lingered in 2014-2019, juvenile chum salmon metabolism was super-charged, meaning they needed more food, said the study by scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Alaska Department of Fish...
Installation of security cameras at eight port and harbor sites has started. “Chatham just showed up today,” Harbormaster Steve Miller said on Jan. 2, referring to Juneau-based Chatham Electric, which has a $495,000 borough contract for the work. “We did all the site inspections for the camera locations. … We’ll be working on it, and we should be done by the end of March,” Miller said. Originally intended to be installed in late summer through fall of 2023, Miller said he was unsure of the reason for the postponement, although he believes it...
In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, the leader of Kake’s tribal government asked federal managers to open an emergency hunt, citing the community’s fears about having enough food. The request was approved by a federal management agency, the Federal Subsistence Board, and the 2020 harvest of moose and deer went ahead, supplying 135 households with meat. The opening of the hunt prompted a lawsuit from Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration — which is now, for a second time, appealing a defeat it suffered in federal court a...
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has released its forecast of the number of king salmon that could return to the Unuk, Taku and Chilkat Rivers in the summer of 2024. The department did not release a forecast number for the Stikine River, citing insufficient data. “However, the terminal run is expected to be well below the escapement goal range of 14,000 to 28,000,” it said. Stikine River king salmon returns fell below the lower bound of escapement goals each year from 1975-1979, as well as 1983, 1984 and 2009, and each year from 201...
Otto Heinz Florschutz III, 65, a nearly 40-year resident of Wrangell, departed mortality on Nov. 20, 2023. A private service will be held for the family, with a public memorial to be announced at a later date. Otto was born in Wilmington, Delaware, on April 4, 1958. He graduated from Washington High School in North Carolina before attending Beaufort County Community College in North Carolina to become a machinist - work that he continued to enjoy throughout his life. Bitten by wanderlust, Otto...
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...
State officials have released the names of the four people killed and two others still missing from the Nov. 20 landslide that hit just past 11-Mile Zimovia Highway. As of Monday, Nov. 27, searchers had found the bodies of Timothy Heller, 44, his wife, Beth Heller, 36, and their daughters, Mara, 16, and Kara, 11. Mara was a high school junior and Kara was in fifth grade. Searchers found Mara's body the night of the slide, during the initial search operations by first responders able to reach the...
After recent years of record or near-record runs and harvests, Bristol Bay sockeye salmon numbers are expected to return to more average levels next year, according to state biologists. The 2024 Bristol Bay sockeye salmon run is expected to total 39 million fish, with a predicted range between about 25 million and 53 million fish, according to a preliminary forecast released Nov. 3 by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. That is 35% lower than the average over the past 10 years but 6% higher than the long-term average for Bristol Bay, the...
State officials today released the names of the three people killed and three others still missing from the Monday night landslide at 11-Mile Zimovia Highway. Searchers have found the bodies of Timothy Heller, 44, his wife, Beth Heller, 36, and their daughter, Mara, 16. Mara was a high school junior. Searchers found her body on Monday night. Crews found Timothy and Beth Heller on Tuesday. As of Friday morning, searchers had not found Derek Heller, 12, Kara Heller, 11, or Otto Florschutz, 65. Derek was in sixth grade; Kara in fifth grade....
Members of the Wrangell Fish and Game Advisory Committee are concerned about the future of commercial salmon fishing as Alaska’s tourism industry continues to expand, bringing in more non-resident fishers on charter trips. The advisory committee supports amending state regulation to prevent the Southeast sport fishery from exceeding its 20% share of the Pacific Salmon Commission’s annual harvest ceiling for king salmon. The committee voted Nov. 7 to support a proposal calling for tighter state regulation of the charter catch and questioned whe...
A federal judge in Anchorage has ruled that U.S. government officials did not overstep the law when they allowed an emergency hunt near Kake during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The decision, published Nov. 3 by Judge Sharon Gleason, is the latest chapter in a long-running dispute between the state and federal officials over who has the authority to regulate subsistence hunting and fishing on public lands in Alaska. Gleason is also overseeing a separate but unrelated lawsuit by the federal government against the state over...
Now in its 15th year, the applied fisheries program at the University of Alaska Southeast draws students from across the state and across the country. Not just ocean states like Florida, but the Great Lakes state of Wisconsin, and even landlocked Wyoming and Kentucky this semester. “Our enrollment has been increasing,” said assistant professor Lauren Wild, who has taught in the program since 2020. Students attend online or, she said, if they live in an area without adequate and reliable high-speed internet service, the school will send the...
Chum salmon are now reproducing farther north in some North Slope rivers, researchers have confirmed. A University of Alaska Fairbanks team this fall found about 100 chum salmon that were spawning or had just spawned in the Anaktuvuk and Itkillik rivers. The rivers are tributaries of the Colville River, which flows into the Arctic Ocean. The discovery of salmon that far north was not a surprise since all five species of Alaska salmon have been spotted in the Arctic, said Peter Westley, an associate professor at UAF’s College of Fisheries and O...
Hunters harvested a total of 141 moose in the Wrangell-Petersburg area this year, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. This year’s take is much higher than the harvest of 118 in 2022 and exceeds the five-year average of about 120 moose, according to the department’s statistics. “The previous high was 132, and it was in 2021,” said Frank Robbins, a state game wildlife biologist in the Petersburg office. The season opened Sept. 15 and ran through Oct. 15. The count covers moose hunts on Wrangell, Mitkof, Kupreanof, Kuiu, Zarembo,...
Alaska is seeking to turn mariculture — a form of marine farming that includes oysters and kelp — into a $100 million industry in the next 20 years. With two kelp farm permit holders and an operating oyster farm near town, Wrangell is home to a nascent mariculture industry of its own. Robert Lemke of Salt Garden Farm has permits for two kelp farms, each three acres, on the Back Channel near Madan Bay and Earl West Cove. Though he’s held the permits since 2020, he hasn’t started a kelp crop yet and is planning to do so this season for the fir...
Bystanders watched through the windows of Petersburg IGA as wildlife troopers and police captured a young bear inside the grocery store on Oct. 17. Authorities later killed the orphaned bear, which they said was unlikely to survive the winter. Alaska State Wildlife Troopers Josh Spann and Sgt. Cody Litster tried to push the bear out the door, hoping to get it back into a wooded lot and on its own again. However, “it was starting to create more problems and a spectacle,” Litster said. “A dog catcher’s pole was used. It was brought out across...
The Southeast salmon drift gillnet season officially closed Thursday, Oct. 12, with the state reporting the harvest came in below the 10-year average of 2013-2022 for all species other than chum salmon. Though overall run strengths for all species other than king salmon “were generally good to excellent” in Southeast, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game reported Oct. 12, the drift gillnet harvest was weaker than usual for several reasons. The state reported there were fewer commercial gillnetters working — 341 this year, down by 20 boats...
Alaska fishermen will be able to harvest red king crab, the largest and most lucrative of all the Bering Sea crab species, for the first time in two years, offering a slight reprieve to the beleaguered fishery beset by low numbers likely exacerbated by climate change. There was no such rebound for snow crab, however, and that fishery will remain closed for a second straight year, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced on Oct. 6. “The Bristol Bay red king crab fishery for the prior two seasons were closed based on low abundance and par...
A year after state officials imposed unprecedented shutdowns on crab fishing in the Bering Sea, the snow crab population is in even worse shape than it was last year, when the Alaska Department of Fish and Game canceled the 2022-23 harvest. Survey results were presented Oct. 4 in Anchorage to the advisory panel of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which is charged by the federal government with managing fisheries in the region. The presentation was by Mike Litzow, a National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries biologist...
The Stikine Sportsmen Association is offering a $2,500 reward for information leading to the conviction of whoever illegally killed a cow moose and left the carcass to rot in the woods south of town. A hiker discovered the kill and reported it Sept. 24, said Chadd Yoder, the state wildlife trooper in Wrangell. After inspecting the carcass, he estimated it had been dead five to 10 days. The moose was “human killed,” and all of the meat left at the site, Yoder said Friday, Sept. 29, declining to share too many details about the ongoing inv...
