Little South America is shaping up to be one of Unalaska's busiest marine centers. The Carl E. Moses small boat harbor is reaching completion, and now a different project might be on the verge of starting up.

Northern Mechanical has filed a request to build a barge-loading facility on the western side of Little South America, which would be used for shipping material from two area quarries. Right now, Northern Mechanical loads its quarry rock at a dock by the city landfill. However, that dock is set to disappear once the city completes its landfill expansion project.

United Fishermen of Alaska has joined mounting calls for reinstatement of Alaska’s Coastal Management Program.

UFA is an industry association representing 37 commercial fishing groups.  The Coastal Management Program coordinated state and local input on federal development projects before sunsetting in June, after the legislature failed to renew it.

UFA Executive Director Mark Vinsel says the issue should be a priority during the upcoming legislative session.

Traditionally, it’s bad luck to kill an albatross. That’s especially the case if it’s a short-tailed albatross, since taking the endangered bird as bycatch can result in fishery closures.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, one of these birds was taken in the hook-and-line groundfish fishery last Tuesday. The bird had come from a breeding colony in Japan, and it was taken west of the Pribilofs. A tag on the albatross showed that the bird was less than two years old.

The Alaska Volcano Observatory has downgraded the alert level for Cleveland Volcano to yellow.  Scientists have been monitoring the volcano since July when a lava dome in the crater started to grow. 

Early last month it threatened to overflow and unleash a major ash cloud.  Now scientists are saying that satellite observations show the eruption may have paused or stopped.  The dome has shown no significant growth in several weeks, although it remains hot.

Slow Internet and outdated wireless data coverage are facts of life for many Alaskan communities.

That might be about to change though.  Last week the Federal Communications Commission dedicated a $4.5 billion dollar subsidy fund to providing broadband and 3G access in rural areas.

In the past, the Universal Service Fund was used to subsidize rural telephone usage.  Now the FCC has renamed it the Connect America Fund and expanded its mission to ensuring broadband access in remote areas.  Here’s FCC spokesperson Mark Wigfield.

When a building catches fire, the situation is scary enough. The stakes are even higher on a boat, where there’s nowhere to go and no one to fight the fire but the people on board. The crew of Kodiak-based catcher-processor found themselves in that situation last week, while finishing a long fishing trip on the Bering Sea.

KUCB’s Alexandra Gutierrez has more here.

Every year, the Alaska Department of Labor devotes one monthly report entirely to fisheries issues. They run the data on how many people the fishing industry employs and how much revenue it brings in.

The report found that the number of people commercially harvesting fish has gone down over the past five years. In 2005, the monthly employment average was about 7,500 people. Last year, it was under 7,000.

The governing panel for the Community Development Quota program has released its report on the finances and investments of its six member groups. That program allocates about 10% of the Bering Sea’s fish stocks to western Alaska communities that have traditionally had large Native populations and high levels of poverty.

In a press release, Western Alaska Community Development Association Executive Director Aggie Blandford states that the goal of the report is to highlight the successes of the CDQ groups. The report lists numerous gains, including the development of alternative energy in the Aleutian Islands and the construction of a new small boat harbor in the Pribilofs.

A spending bill that includes money for fisheries research and essential air service was passed by the United States Senate earlier today.

The so-called “minibus” bill allocates $67 million to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That money will be spent on stock assessments that determine how healthy the nation’s commercial fisheries are, and how much fish can be caught. Only $51 million was allocated toward the program during the last fiscal year.