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The start of 2017 marks the 26th year for this weekly column that targets news for and about Alaska’s seafood industry. The goal is to make all readers more aware of the economic and cultural importance of our state’s first and oldest industry. Today, Alaska fishermen and processors provide 65 percent of our nation’s wild-caught seafood; it is also Alaska’s most valuable export to more than 100 countries around the world. The seafood industry puts more people to work throughout Alaska than oil/gas, mining, timber and tourism combined. The bul...
Alaska’s university system is ramping up programs to train the next generations of fishery and ocean specialists - and plenty of jobs await. Since 1987, the College of Fisheries and Ocean Science (CFOS) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks has offered undergraduate and graduate degrees in Fisheries Science, complete with paid internships to help prepare them for positions in the state’s largest industry. “It’s a degree path preparing students for what I call fish squeezers – they’re going to go to work for the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game, o...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) – Biologist Colleen Handel saw her first black-capped chickadee with the heartrending disorder in 1998. The tiny birds showed up at birdfeeders in Alaska’s largest city with freakishly long beaks. Some beaks looked like sprung scissors, unable to come together at the tips. Others curved up or down like crossed sickles. Handel, a U.S. Geological Survey bird specialist, was sure the cause of avian keratin disorder would be found quickly: contaminated birdseed, a poison targeting spruce bark beetles, maybe some sort of bac...
FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP) – Evon Peter pushed his way through hostility and overt racism in Alaska public schools to succeed in academia. He now directs one of the Fairbanks institutions best equipped to expand opportunities in education. Since 2014, Peter has been vice chancellor of the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ College of Rural and Community Development. The college encompasses five rural Alaska campuses as well as the university’s Native Studies program. He was scheduled Oct. 20 to moderate an education panel during the Alaska Feder...
Cordovans are hoping to revive a long lost Tanner crab fishery in Prince William Sound as a step towards keeping the town’s waterfront working year round. The crab fishery produced up to 14 million pounds in the early 1970s and had declined to about half a million pounds by the time it was closed after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. State managers believe the Tanner stock remains depleted and cannot provide for a commercial fishery, but locals believe it’s time to take a closer look. “It’s largely the opinion of the people around here th...
Earlier this month a Wrangell youth was among four-dozen Alaskan students to put their math and science skills to the test in Anchorage. Seventh-grader Rowen Wiederspohn was accepted into the ExxonMobil Bernard Harris Summer Science Camp put on each year by the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program (ANSEP). Hosted by the University of Alaska Anchorage, the two-week, all expenses paid, summer program focuses on honing young Alaskans' science, technology, engineering and mathematics...
Alaska is one of a handful of U.S. states to launch a go-to website aimed at keeping ocean acidification in the public eye. The Alaska Ocean Acidification Network, a collaboration of state and federal scientists, agencies, tribes, conservation, fishing and aquaculture groups, went live last month. Its goal is to provide a forum for researchers to share their findings, and to connect with coastal residents concerned about future impacts on their communities. Ocean acidification (OA) is caused by the ocean absorbing excess carbon dioxide (CO2)...
A steering committee has been selected to head up restructuring of the Alaska Marine Highway System. In May the office of Gov. Bill Walker tasked regional economic forum Southeast Conference with revitalizing the state’s maritime transportation network, a two-phase process which will involve looking both at its organizational structure and business model. To that end, a committee representing AMHS’ varied user base was selected from around 25 applicants. “We had quite a few names to choose from,” commented Robert Venables, transpo...
Debra McCormack (nee Ferguson), 60, passed away in the comfort of her family on June 30, 2015 after a long fought battle with cancer. She was born at Bishop Rowe Hospital in Wrangell, Alaska on October 23, 1954. She grew up and graduated from high school in Wrangell, Class of 1972. She attended college at the University of Oregon and University of Alaska Anchorage, where she graduated with a bachelor's degree in business administration. She married Jim McCormack, who also grew up in Wrangell in...
Each summer, millions of children across the country partake in some sort of camp experience, be it for sports, outdoor adventuring or social development. The American Camp Association estimates 7.8 million young Americans will attend more than 14,000 different day and residential camps this summer. Wrangell-area girls have been able to enjoy the summer camp experience for themselves this week, put on by the Girl Scouts of Alaska (GSAK). A pair of instructors has been holding day camps out at Sh...
The planning team for future development at Wrangell's former Institute site returned this week for a second round of public discussions. At a presentation Monday night, information gleaned from previous sessions in March had been narrowed down into three different concepts. Project lead Chris Mertl of Corvus Design was joined by architect James Bibb of NorthWind Architects and analyst Meilani Schijvens of Rain Coast Data. A surveyor with R&M Engineering joined them the following day for open...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) – One out of every nine students at the University of Alaska reported being a victim of sexual misconduct or assault last year, according to a new study released by the Alaska Justice Center. The center at the University of Alaska Anchorage released its study Monday that says 11.4 percent of students experienced sexual misconduct, sexual assault or both in 2015. It also shows that University of Alaska Southeast students were more likely to be victims of sexual misconduct or assault, with one out of every eight students, o...
At its May 24 meeting, the Borough Assembly learned of a possible development in the works for Wrangell’s Institute property. City Manager Jeff Jabusch explained he was currently in contact with the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program (ANSEP), an accelerated learning program aimed at Alaskan high schoolers. ANSEP launched its Acceleration Academy in 2009, in part to address a longstanding problem Alaska’s university system has been experiencing with chronic remediation of incoming students. Compared to peers elsewhere in the cou...
As Wrangell High School prepared to send off 19 of its senior class last week, a number of awards and scholarships were distributed to students at a May 18 ceremony in the gym. "This is a phenomenal group of young men and women who are going off in all directions," school activities director Lisa Nikodym said. The 2016 class together earned over $130,000 in scholarships alone, and including grants, scholarships and unaccepted awards were offered $733,882 in all. Graduating senior Maleah Wenzel e...
Alaska’s salmon season has gotten underway with lots of optimism, a far cry from the bleak feelings of a year ago. Last year’s fishery was blown asunder by a perfect storm of depressed currencies, salmon backlogs and global markets awash with farmed fish. Prices to fishermen fell by nearly 41 percent between 2013 and 2015, years which produced the two largest Alaska salmon harvest volumes on record. But in the past six months, those trends have turned around. “Based on current market conditions and harvest expectations, it appears proba...
Increasingly corrosive oceans are raising more red flags for Bering Sea crab stocks. Results from a first ever, two year project on baby Tanner crabs show that higher ocean acidity (pH) affects both their shell production and the immune systems. Bairdi Tanner crab, the larger cousins of snow crab, are growing into one of Alaska’s largest crab fisheries with a nearly 20 million pound harvest this season. “We put mom crabs from the Bering Sea in a tank, and allowed her embryos to grow and hatch in an acidified treatment,” explained project leade...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) _ The Alaska education department announced Friday that it is canceling its computer-based statewide student assessments this year, citing technical disruptions and concerns with the validity of the results. Federal rules call for state education departments to administer standards-based tests for students in grades three through eight and once in high school, but they also say the tests are to be high quality, valid and reliable and of adequate technical quality, interim Commissioner Susan McCauley said. “I do not b...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) – A Rhode Island-size ice field in the mountains behind Alaska’s capital could disappear by 2200 if climate-warming trends continue, according to a University of Alaska Fairbanks study. The study published this week by the Journal of Glaciology predicts 60 percent of the ice in the Juneau Ice Field could be gone by 2099. The Juneau Ice Field is the source for a major Alaska tourist attraction, the Mendenhall Glacier, visited last year by 450,000 people at a U.S. Forest Service center. By 2099, the study authors said, the...
If a fisherman gets 50-cents a pound for his reds, how can the fish fetch $10, $15 or more at retail counters? “It’s all the other stuff that happens after he sells the fish. A lot of costs, margins and profits are included in that retail price,” said Andy Wink, a Fisheries Economist with the McDowell Group in Juneau. It’s an ‘apples and oranges’ comparison when it comes to using weights paid for the raw goods and the end product. A lot of weight is lost going from a whole fish, which fishermen are paid on, to a fillet at retail counters. ...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) – Legislators this week have reached the half-way point of the scheduled 90-day session, with the House working toward finalizing its version of the state operating budget and a Senate committee working on a measure geared toward curbing and containing state Medicaid costs. Bill that would keep Planned Parenthood from providing sex education in schools and restrict how the Board of Regents regulates concealed handguns on university campuses have garnered recent attention. But the Senate remains on schedule with its review o...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) – Fishing industry and lawmakers on Thursday puzzled over the origins of a proposed one percent tax increase in fisheries business taxes and fishery resource landing taxes. During a hearing on the bill by the House fisheries committee, fishermen testified that they did not understand the origins of the increase. It is expected to raise $18 million in new revenue for the state annually, according to the Department of Revenue. It is one of six proposed industry taxes from Gov. Bill Walker, including increases to mining, m...
Fishing lives and fishing wives are set to be showcased for a national audience; one as a documentary and the other, on reality television. The first, an hour-long feature called Last Man Fishing, focuses on the lifestyles and challenges facing our nation’s small-scale fishermen. “We’re from Indiana and we realized there is a disconnect between the consumer and where their fish is coming from,” said JD Schuyler who is co-producing the documentary with his wife, Kelley. “We want to bridge the gap of people appreciating seafood, while also unde...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) – A newly released report from the University of Alaska projects a significant drop in state spending this year on the construction industry. The annual report from the university’s Institute of Social and Economic Research presented to the Associated General Contractors of Alaska and the Construction Industry Progress Fund says construction spending in 2016 is expected to drop 18 percent from last year to $7.3 billion, The Alaska Dispatch News reported. The report also shows that oil and gas construction spending, whi...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) – Alaska’s gaping budget deficit is expected to be the focus of the legislative session beginning this week. But the road to a solution may be rocky, with differing ideas for how to help close the deficit and difficult choices that could significantly impact state services. A continued drop in oil prices adds urgency to legislators’ work, as does the ongoing draw-down on savings to help cover state costs. North Slope crude peaked around $66 a barrel last year, a crash from the prior year, and fell below $30 last week. For R...
