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The commercial tanner crab and golden king crab season in Southeast opens at noon Feb 17. A change this year will require golden king crab fishermen to call in to the Department of Fish and Game every day to report which management area they plan to fish, to help fisheries staff better anticipate and manage the harvest. The department announced the golden king crab guideline harvest level in southern Southeast, Registration Area A, at 272,500 pounds, with specific areas seeing notable changes. The number is almost three times the size of last...
Boeing told employees Monday that it plans to increase quality inspections of its 737 Max 9 aircraft, following the failure of an emergency exit door panel on an Alaska Airlines flight Jan. 5. The inspections come after federal regulators grounded the 737 Max, and after Boeing said it is “clear that we are not where we need to be” on quality assurance and controls. Alaska Airlines and United Airlines are the only U.S. carriers with the Max 9 aircraft. As of Monday, the Federal Aviation Administration had not said when it would allow the airline...
Using an unmanned underwater drone to search a boat that had overturned near Chichagof Island, searchers on Jan. 10 located the bodies of two people who were missing after three others were rescued from the Jan. 9 accident. The three who survived were hoisted from the water within about an hour from the time Sitka Police Department received a digital GPS distress alert at 4:35 p.m. Jan. 9. Police immediately notified Coast Guard Air Station Sitka, and within 14 minutes a rescue helicopter was on the way to the accident site, in waters off the...
An earthquake jolted some Sitka residents awake Thursday night, Jan. 11, but no damage was reported and no tsunami occurred. The Alaska Earthquake Center at Fairbanks said the magnitude 5.9 earthquake occurred at 10:46 p.m. on the seafloor 50 miles south of Sitka. It was felt across Southeast, including Wrangell. Assistant Sitka Fire Chief David Johnson said the department received a half dozen or so calls about the momentary shaking that people experienced throughout town. Elisabeth Nadin, communications manager of the earthquake center, said...
For much of the past century, fish hatcheries have been built in the Pacific Northwest, across the U.S. and around the world to boost fish populations where wild numbers have gone down. But an analysis of more than 200 studies on hatcheries programs meant to boost salmonid numbers across the globe — including salmon, trout and whitefish — shows that nearly all have had negative impacts on the wild populations of those fish. Most commonly, hatchery fish reduced the genetic diversity of wild fish, leading to poor health and reproductive out...
In a major hit to Southwest Alaska’s fishing industry, Peter Pan Seafood will keep its huge plant in the village of King Cove shuttered this winter, meaning that the company won’t be processing millions of dollars worth of cod, pollock, crab, salmon and halibut. “It's one of the most difficult days of my life,” Rodger May, one of the company’s owners and a longtime player in the seafood industry, said in a brief interview Thursday, Jan. 11 “It's just a devastating time for the industry.” The closure is the latest sign of the widening turm...
Alaska was one of 15 states to reject federal funding that would have provided direct grocery assistance this summer to thousands of families with children in the state who are facing increased food insecurity and rising food costs. The new federal program would have meant an extra $120 per child in direct funds this summer to families who qualify for free or reduced lunches — about half of all kids in Alaska. Officials with Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration cited a major food stamps backlog at the Alaska Division of Public Assistance as the...
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...
A polar bear found dead on Alaska’s North Slope is the first of the species known to have been killed by the highly pathogenic avian influenza that is circulating among animal populations around the world. The polar bear was found dead in October near Utqiagvik, the nation’s northernmost community, the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation reported. The discovery of the virus in the animal’s body tissue, a process that required sampling and study by the North Slope Borough Department of Wildlife Management and other agencies, confi...
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 Boeing jetliner that lost a door panel inflight over Oregon on Jan. 5 was not being used for flights to Hawaii after a warning light that could have indicated a pressurization problem lit up on three separate occasions over the past month, a federal official said Sunday, Jan. 7. Alaska Airlines decided to restrict the aircraft from long flights over water so the plane “could return very quickly to an airport” if the warning light reappeared, said Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board. Homendy cautioned that the...
Alaska is expected to gain 5,400 jobs in 2024, an increase of 1.7% over the past year and enough to nudge total state employment above 2019 levels for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, according to the newly published annual forecast from the Alaska Department of Labor. The job outlook was published in the January issue of the department’s monthly research magazine, Alaska Economic Trends. The “major catalyst” for job growth, the forecast said, will be big projects: federally funded infrastructure projects and minin...
Transgender girls in Alaska are now banned from competing on girls school sports teams. The new rule took effect in November. The board of the Alaska School Activities Association — which regulates school sports in the state — voted 5-3 in October to adopt the rule affecting transgender girls. The rule was required by the state Board of Education, which voted in August to require that the association create a sports division limited to students who are assigned female at birth. That excludes transgender girls. More than half of U.S. states hav...
Just like many other Alaska communities, the service provider in Ketchikan is dropping cable TV and moving to streaming. The Ketchikan Public Utilities Telecommunications Division has announced it will stop offering cable television services in September 2024. The city-owned utility said the changing landscape of how people view their video entertainment was a big factor in the decision, with streaming services largely taking over while cable TV subscriptions have declined. The decision not only was made in response to the drop in cable TV...
Alaska’s campaign ethics commission found that opponents of ranked-choice voting violated the state’s campaign ethics laws for months by funneling most of their funding through a tax-exempt church and inaccurately reporting their funding to the state. In a decision released Jan. 3, the Alaska Public Offices Commission issued more than $94,000 in fines against groups working to repeal Alaska’s voting system. Former Alaska Attorney General Kevin Clarkson, who represents the opponents of ranked-choice voting fined by the commission, said they...
What if prized rare earth elements could be extracted from seaweed, avoiding the need to dig into the ground for the materials used in technology and renewable-energy equipment? That question will be addressed by a new project to examine whether those elements can be found in seaweed growing in the waters of Southeast Alaska. The University of Alaska Fairbanks-led project is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy as part of a broader push to find and produce for domestic rare earth elements. It is one of three department-funded “algal m...
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...
The Alaska Police Standards Council has voted down a regulation change that would have allowed the state to hire corrections officers as young as 18 years old — the current minimum age is 21. The Department of Corrections floated the proposal as a tool to combat its staff shortage, insufficient applicant pool and high vacancy rate. In September, the department reported more than 100 open positions for prison officers and a 30% decrease in applications compared to the previous year. Most members of the council wanted to accept the new r...
Russian-caught pollock, cod, salmon and crab that is processed in China will no longer be legally allowed in U.S. markets, under an executive order issued Dec. 22 by President Joe Biden. The action seeks to close a loophole that the Russian seafood industry was able to use to skirt import sanctions put in place in 2022 in response to the invasion of Ukraine. The ban is now extended to any seafood caught in Russian waters or by Russian-flagged vessels, regardless whether the seafood has been “incorporated or substantially transformed into o...
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The U.S. government is entering a new era of collaboration with Native American and Alaska Native leaders in managing public lands and other resources, with top federal officials saying that incorporating more Indigenous knowledge into decision-making can help spur conservation and combat climate change. Federal emergency managers on Dec. 7 also announced updates to recovery policies to aid tribal communities in the repair or rebuilding of traditional homes or ceremonial buildings after a series of wildfires, floods and o...
The Alaska Division of Public Assistance processed more than 2,000 food stamp applications over eight days in mid-December as it works to clear a backlog that has kept thousands of Alaskans waiting for benefits. Earlier in December, food aid was delayed by more than a month for over 12,000 Alaskans. That number was down to about 10,000 before Christmas. Division Director Deb Etheridge said the week before Christmas that her employees are on track to clear the backlog in 90 days. Etheridge said after the Christmas holiday she will reevaluate...
Sitkans received a $300 credit on their December utility bills after the city assembly voted to share some of the higher-than-expected sales tax revenues with the public. The assembly voted to spend just over $1 million on the program, distributing the money to every residential utility account in town. Sitka saw a record number of cruise ship visitors last summer, swelling the sales tax coffers but also inconveniencing residents. In passing the appropriation in November, assembly members said they wanted citizens to receive some compensation...
With a deep reduction in oil revenues expected, Alaska is on track for an almost $1 billion budget hole in the coming year that will have to be filled with money from savings, according to a spending plan presented Dec. 14 by Gov. Mike Dunleavy. The governor described his budget for the year beginning next July 1 as “status quo” in most categories. “There’s no cuts in this budget,” he said during a news conference in Juneau. There are a few targeted areas with increases, however, including more staff to help process a backlog of food stamp ben...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy said education is among his top priorities in the coming fiscal year but did not include an increase to the state’s per-student funding formula, known as the base student allocation, in his proposed budget. The budget includes about $1.11 billion to fund the formula that distributes money to school districts statewide, down almost 3% from this year due to declining enrollment. Dunleavy has proposed spending almost twice as much on next year’s Permanent Fund dividend. Lawmakers this past spring approved a one-time appropriatio...
Alaskans could pay significantly more next year for mailing packages to, from and within the state with two price increases planned by the U.S. Postal Service. In an effort to reduce its projected $160 billion loss over the next 10 years, the Postal Service announced it is planning a 5.7% average nationwide price hike in 2024 for some shipping options. Customers using USPS Ground Advantage for shipping within Alaska would see a 9.2% average increase. The price increases are set to take effect Jan. 21, but some Alaska mailing rates from Outside...