Chinese law enforcement has taken custody of a pirate fishing vessel. The Coast Guard cutter Rush intercepted the Da Cheng just over two weeks ago in the North Pacific Ocean near Japan.
The Rush crew found 30 metric tons of albacore tuna and six metric tons of shark and shark fin on board. They'd been taking using high seas drift nets, which are banned by international treaty.
Chief Petty Officer Kip Wadlow says the Da Cheng crew insisted their 177-foot ship was flagged in Indonesia. That turned out to be a lie.
Icicle Seafoods is paying out $430,000 in fines to the federal government for using ozone-depleting refrigerants at its facilities and aboard its vessels.
According to a complaint filed by the Environmental Protection Agency, Icicle violated the Clean Air Act by using R-22 refrigerant in a negligent manner. In 2006, the company allegedly failed to test for refrigerant leaks aboard the Northern Victor, a factory trawler that processes Bering Sea pollock. Icicle also allegedly failed to repair those leaks within a month of their being discovered.
The first comprehensive survey of the Chukchi Sea ecosystem got underway last week. Scientists will spend the next month collecting samples and cataloguing life in the northern waters.
The 143-foot Alaska Knight is normally a commercial trawler, but for this month, it’s moonlighting as a scientific research vessel - with all of the accompanying baggage.
“There’s coolers upon coolers upon coolers and buckets upon buckets upon buckets all over this boat at the moment," says Lyle Britt, a federal fisheries biologist.
A large earthquake hit near Nikolski around 10:30 Friday morning.
“Nikolski is located about 75 miles from the epicenter and I would expect that at this distance a 6.2 would be felt by most people," says Alaska Earthquake Information Center seismologist Natasha Ruppert. "But when we called and asked people, nobody actually felt it.”
Ruppert says she hasn’t had time to do any analysis, but her suspicion is that the earthquake, although powerful, moved very slowly – too slowly for human perception.
It’s been 15 years since Atka first started working on a new hydroelectric power plant. Now, the facility is almost done.
Atka city manager Julie Dirks says the plant should go online by the end of the month, and will start generating electricity right away. Eventually, hydroelectric power will replace diesel as the main source of energy on the island.
But Dirks couldn’t say exactly when that will happen.
The state has signed off on a proposal from the City of Akutan to annex nearby lands. The new city boundaries encompass an additional 130 square miles, including the new airport on Akun Island and the city’s geothermal project. In a press release, the Department of Commerce noted that the annexation gives the city greater authority over administration of those projects.
There were no objections to the annexation from the public. The Local Boundary Commission voted 5-0 to approve the petition.
A group of scientists aboard the Coast Guard icebreaker Healy are heading to the Arctic to study an important ecosystem downstream of drill sites in the Chukchi Sea.
Hanna Shoal is a shallow, 30-mile long shelf off the coast of northwest Alaska. It’s one of the Chukchi Sea’s most biologically productive spots and an important feeding area for walrus and bowhead whales. It’s also just downstream of a number of oil and gas leases – including one of Shell’s exploratory drill sites.
The Coast Guard cutter Rush normally patrols Alaskan waters, but it’s traveled deep into the Pacific Ocean in pursuit of a suspected pirate fishing vessel.
At a Senate hearing in Kodiak on Monday, Coast Guard Commandant Robert Papp said the cutter Rush had intercepted a vessel suspected of high seas drift netting off the coast of Japan. The United Nations moratorium on high seas drift netting is enforced by member states, including the U.S.
A magnitude 5.6 earthquake shook Sand Point and King Cove early Wednesday morning. Residents felt the tremor, but the local police departments say there have been no reports of damage or injuries.
The quake struck 55 miles southwest of King Cove. Alaska Earthquake Information Center seismologist Natasha Ruppert says so far, there haven’t been any aftershocks from the event.
