A group of international travelers and one local resident are on their way to St. Matthew Island to set up a small, temporary radio station.

KUCB's Alexandra Gutierrez has more on these ham radio enthusiasts.

The Pacific cod fishery is a month into B-season, and the freezer longline fleet is fishing at an even pace under a quota system.

KUCB's Alexandra Gutierrez has more.

A 6.2-magnitude earthquake hit between Sand Point and King Cove this weekend, according to the Alaska Earthquake Information Center.

The Saturday quake was powerful enough to be felt as far as Akutan. However, its impact on area residents was minimal.

“Some small objects fell of the shelves, like pictures. But we didn’t receive any reports of significant [damage] or any structural damage to the houses,” says Natasha Rupert, a seismologist with the Alaska Earthquake Information Center.

The sockeye salmon run is winding down at Wislow.

Over the past three days, just over 800 salmon passed through the weir at McLees Lake. Last week, reds were coming in at a rate of roughly 1,500 per day. That bring the sockeye season to a somewhat early end.

 “The season usually lasts another week at least,” say Derek Hildreth, a fisheries biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

An Akutan man charged with sexual assault was acquitted this morning.

Richard Stepetin, 45, stood accused of having sex with an unconscious 24-year-old woman following a late-night gathering in early January. Testimony was heard this week in the Unalaska courthouse, and the jury returned a verdict of “not guilty” after deliberating for five hours over the course of two days.

In order to reach a verdict of guilty, Assistant District Attorney David Martin had to demonstrate that intercourse had taken place, that the alleged victim was incapacitated and unable to consent to sex, and that the defendant was aware that she was unable to consent. According to one juror, the prosecutor failed to prove the third component beyond reasonable doubt. The juror added that the group found it difficult to piece together what actually happened, since both parties consumed substantial amounts of alcohol and suffered blackouts that night.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released their annual stock assessment report today. While the East Coast continues to struggle with overfishing, commercial stocks in the Pacific Ocean remain abundant and healthy overall.

Alaska’s stocks seem to be in particularly good shape by comparison. NOAA lists 40 stocks as subject to overfishing, and not one of those is in Alaska waters. Only three stocks in the Pacific Ocean are being harvested in excess right now, all tuna species.

A big auction for blue king crab is underway in Seattle, and it’s got some members of the seafood industry talking. The product isn’t being sold by the usual distributors, and it isn’t from Alaska waters. KUCB’s Alexandra Gutierrez has more on NOAA’s sell-off of a quarter-million pounds of seized Russian crab.

Today, lawyers made opening statements in a case concerning a sexual assault that allegedly took place in Akutan earlier this year.

Richard Stepetin, 45, has been charged with sexual assault in the second degree after a 24-year-old woman reported that he had sexual intercourse with her while she was unconscious and incapacitated.

Assistant District Attorney David Martin is representing the state of Alaska in this trial. In his account of the night, he described Stepetin as taking advantage of an intoxicated woman in a vulnerable situation. He said that the woman had passed out in Stepetin’s home at a late night gathering in January, and that Stepetin then took her to his bedroom and locked the door, despite another friend’s request that the alleged victim be taken to her own home. Stepetin then allegedly assaulted the woman that morning while alone in the house. In his words, he described the woman as “wak[ing] up not from a nightmare but to a nightmare.”

The pollock fleet is allowing more fishing grounds in the Bering Sea to be closed in an effort to reduce the high levels of chum bycatch.

On Monday, representatives from the pollock cooperatives agreed to expand the salmon bycatch avoidance zone by another 1,000 square nautical miles. That brings the total area that can be closed at any given time to 5,000 square miles.

So far, the fleet has taken an unusually high number of chums this B season. As of this week, it had taken approximately 53,000 chum salmon. Last year, only 13,000 chums were taken over the course of the whole season. Most of that bycatch was taken during the first two weeks of the season, before the fleet started making targeted closures based on where salmon was being caught – a system known as the rolling hotspot program.