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Values of Alaska salmon permits have taken a nose dive after a dismal fishing season for all but a few regions. “No activity for drift gillnet or seine permits in Prince William Sound…No interest in Southeast seine or troll permits…Nothing new in Area M (the Alaska Peninsula),” wrote Mike Painter of The Permit Master. And so it goes - “With the lone exception of Bristol Bay and Area M it was a pretty grim season for salmon fishermen all over the state, and we are seeing that reflected in the declining prices for salmon permits and very low...
Patty Gilbert, write-in candidate, running for two three-year seats Occupation and experience: High school math teacher, current president of Wrangell Medical Center Foundation. Formerly two-term member of Wrangell City Council. Why do you wish to serve on the Assembly? "As Alaska's budget deficit grows, revenue-sharing funds decline and our legislators consider state sales and/or income taxes Wrangell, like other cities, will be faced with difficult fiscal decisions and I want to participate...
Governor Bill Walker has officially requested that the federal government declare a disaster for four Alaska regions hurt by one of the poorest pink salmon returns in decades. In a September 19 letter to U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, Walker said fishery failures that occurred this summer at the Kodiak, Prince William Sound, Lower Cook Inlet and Chignik management areas are having a “significant impact on those who depend on the fishery for their livelihood” and asks for the “soonest possible review” due to the economi...
At its regular meeting Tuesday the City and Borough Assembly approved a request by Wrangell Medical Center to pursue a housing assistance grant of up to $550,000 to build a quadruplex for its staff. Hospital CEO Robert Rang explained the amount was the maximum provided by Teacher, Health Professional and Public Safety Housing Program grants through Alaska Housing Finance Corporation. As a four-unit housing complex would likely cost more than that, he said the hospital would approach the Assembly with the specifics of additional funds needed as...
With the seasonal peak behind it, Alaska’s commercial fishing industry is expecting one of the worst shortfalls for salmon in recent memory. As of Tuesday, Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s in-season blue sheet summary estimated just over 102,245,000 salmon had been caught statewide, with less than a quarter of that caught in Southeast. Despite a fair showing for sockeye, the state’s fishermen would be fortunate enough to harvest half the 263,463,000 salmon estimated caught last year. The news has not been good for the local comme...
A sewer main broke early Monday morning, necessitating a temporary shutdown of nearby pump stations and causing an overflow of untreated water into Inner Harbor. The main line connecting town to the sewage treatment plant ruptured near the Sea Level Seafoods processing facility at 1204 Zimovia Highway. City crews responded to the scene, shutting down pump stations near the Public Works Department building and City Park in order to repair the break. Eighty-five percent of Wrangell households are connected to the municipal sewage system, and the...
Events for the 7th Annual Bearfest are already underway, with the first two workshops and symposium presented yesterday at the Nolan Center. The annual activity was started in 2010 by Sylvia Ettefagh, an outfitter with Alaska Vistas and commercial fisherman. Drawing a number of notable speakers and participants each year, Bearfest serves to highlight the local bear population, particularly that found at nearby Anan Wildlife Observatory. About 30 miles southeast of Wrangell, the observatory...
The Wrangell Borough Assembly held an executive session on July 15 to discuss the sale of its belt tunnel freezer facility. It had been approached by the building's current lessee, Trident Seafoods. Giving some background, Assembly member Julie Decker explained the freezer had been part of a three-phase process to enhance local seafood processing infrastructure. Beginning in 2003 with the addition of mobile equipment such as the plate freezer and fillet machine line, in 2004 the belt freezer...
With the supply of treated water dangerously low, the Borough Assembly officially declared the city to be in a state of disaster Tuesday evening. The decision was reached during a special session in which officials met with departmental staff and representatives of Wrangell’s two fish processing plants, Trident Seafoods and Sea Level Seafoods. With the processing season already underway and production ramping up, the two together are consuming about half of the community’s water. Alarm bells were raised by Public Works when it reported its res...
The City and Borough of Wrangell has officially endorsed a plan being put forward by the United States Forest Service concerning future timber sales on the island. In a special meeting on July 15, the Borough Assembly gave its input on a letter of support being drafted by economic development coordinator Carol Rushmore. A final copy was formally submitted to the Wrangell Ranger District on Monday, the last day of the public comment period for its Wrangell timber sale’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement. The DEIS puts forward five alternative...
Salmon takes center stage each summer but many other fisheries also are in full swing from Ketchikan to Kotzebue. For salmon, total catches by July 8 were nearing 28 million fish, of which 10 million were sockeyes, primarily from Bristol Bay. Last week marked the catch of the two billionth sockeye from the Bay since the fishery began in 1884. Other salmon highlights: Southeast trollers wrapped up their summer Chinook fishery on July 5 taking 158,000 kings in just eight days. The Chinook catch is strictly limited by a U.S. and Canada treaty,...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) – poration Sealaska has announced the purchase of a minority stake in a Seattle-based seafood processor, marking its first transition into the seafood industry in nearly 30 years. Sealaska Chief Operating Officer Terry Downes said the purchase of Independent Packers Corporation announced Monday is part of Sealaska’s shift into businesses familiar to its 22,000 shareholders. “It straddles Southeast Alaska and the Pacific Northwest,’’ Downes said. “We want to have our businesses be really relevant to the ownership....
Despite some particularly inclement weather Saturday, Wrangell's Little League teams were able to hold their season's opening ceremony. With temperatures in the 40s, better than an inch of rain coming down and gusts of up to 30 miles per hour, games planned for the season opener were cancelled. Despite that, players donned their uniforms and took to the field at Volunteer Park to usher in the season, which runs through the first week of June. Two leagues have been set up for players aged 7 to...
Cuts affecting Alaska’s fisheries will be spread across all regions and species, depending on the final budget that is approved by state legislators. As it stands now, the total commercial fisheries budget for FY 2017 from all state and federal funding sources is about $64 million, a drop of $10 million over two years. “With cuts of that magnitude, everything is on the table,” said Scott Kelley, director of the Commercial Fisheries Division at the Dept. of Fish and Game. Last year 109 fishery projects were axed, and another 65 are on the cut l...
Alaska’s 2016 salmon harvest will be down by 40 percent from last year’s catch, if the fish show up as predicted. The preliminary numbers released by the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game call for a total catch of 161 million salmon this year; the 2015 harvest topped 268 million fish. The shortfall stems from a projected big decrease for pink salmon. A humpie harvest forecast of 90 million would be a drop of 100 million fish from last summer. Here’s the statewide catch breakdown for the other salmon species: for sockeye, the forecast calls for a...
Continuing the next step in its development of the former Wrangell Institute property, the city brought up the master plan design team for a series of town meetings this week. Originally built by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1932 as a boarding school, by 1978 the site was only intermittently used. The property was transferred to the City of Wrangell in 1995. The majority of the 134-acre property is undeveloped, forested wetlands, with potential for future residential use. The Borough Assembly...
9 marks a quarter of a century for this weekly column that targets Alaska’s seafood industry. At the end of every year, I proffer my ‘no holds barred’ look back at the best and worst fish stories, and select the biggest story of the year. The list is in no particular order and I’m sure to be missing a few, but here are the Fishing Picks and Pans for 2015: • Most eco-friendly fish feat: The massive airlift/barge project led by the Dept. of Environmental Conservation that removed more than 800,000 pounds of marine debris from remote Alaska be...
The year 2015 was largely a good one for Wrangell, with the appearance of several new businesses, large infrastructural developments undertaken by businesses, the formal opening of the Tribe's cultural center, and a balanced financial outlook for the city despite tumultuous budget negotiations in Juneau. The state deficit will remain the largest issue moving ahead into 2016, as will continued mining developments in Canada along shared waters. January On Jan. 12 and 14 the first of three sets of...
Alaska crab shells are fueling an eco-revolution that will drive new income streams for fabrics to pharmaceuticals to water filters. And for the first time, it is happening in the USA and not overseas. The entrepreneurs at Tidal Vision in October made the leap from their labs in Juneau to a pilot plant outside of Seattle to test an earth-friendly method that extracts chitin, the structural element in the exoskeletons of shellfish and insects. Their first big run a few weeks ago was tested on a 60,000 pound batch of crab shells delivered by...
Hundreds of runners carried on through chilly rains at Saturday's Wrangell Invitational Cross-Country meet. The weather kept to around 52 degrees that day, with most of the 0.3 inches falling during the early afternoon races. Coming from 15 schools around the region, 226 runners and 20 coaches participated in the weekend meet, the third so far of the season. A new course was plotted out for the races, held past Muskeg Meadows Golf Course along Spur Road. Wrangell High School fielded 13 runners...
The cruise ship Regatta's departure Tuesday evening marked the start of the end for Wrangell's tourist 2015 season. "I think it was a great season," said Cyni Waddington, with the Chamber of Commerce. "I feel we had just the right amount of cruise ships." The summer's high point came during Wrangell's annual July 4 celebrations, which benefitted from clear weather during an otherwise unusually rainy month. "It was probably one of the most well-attended," Waddington said. "I was happy with the...
Whatever one might say about the year’s fishing harvests, it wouldn’t be fair to say the Southeast purse seining fleet is in the pink. The state forecast for 2015 anticipated a 58 million pink salmon harvest for Southeast, but so far harvests have not been living up to the expectation. “We are not even coming close,” explained Dan Gray, Alaska Department of Fish and Game management coordinator for Southeast fisheries in Sitka. With the season already in its ninth week, only 22 million pink salmon have been reported harvested by seiners so far,...
Various members of the Wrangell community were invited to the high school library Monday afternoon to meet with technical preparation program staff for the University of Alaska Southeast. Earlier in the summer the program’s regional coordinator, Kim Szczatko, set up a permanent office at Wrangell High School, which will expand its scope in Wrangell and other island communities. Presenting with her was the associate dean for UAS Career Education Programs, Pete Traxler. The tech prep program is a partnership program between UAS and local s...
A mile long string of 29 sablefish pots was lost last month in Prince William Sound after being run over by tugs towing barges at Knight Island Passage. “It appears that some tug boats passed back and forth across where the gear was set, and now we have no idea where it is,” said Maria Wessel, a groundfish biologist at the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game office at Cordova. The pots are part of an ongoing tagging study started in 2011 to track the movement of the Sound’s sablefish stock. It was intended to be the third test run for the proje...
Last week's Southeast Alaska Regional Artfest went as prettily as a picture, by all counts. Sixty students and 15 teachers from high schools in Juneau, Klawock, Skagway, Petersburg, Craig, Sitka and Mount Edgecumbe made their way to Wrangell to participate in the four-day event, from April 8 to 11. Fifteen different classes were offered at various locations in town. These were taught by a combination of visiting and local artists, and students were immersed in sometimes brand new mediums of...
