Unalaska police have recovered the body of a hiker who went missing on a remote trail this past weekend.
Jessica Acker, 33, is believed to have left for a hike in the Pyramid Valley area on Sunday. Heavy snow and wind set in that afternoon.
It persisted on Monday, as search party made up of local police, Coast Guard and civilian volunteers spent more than 12 hours looking for the missing woman.
The boundaries of a marine sanctuary proposed by the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. (Credit: PEER)
For over a hundred years, presidents have used the Antiquities Act to order permanent protections for federal land and resources at sea. Now, Alaska’s congressional delegation is looking to curb that authority.
Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan are co-sponsoring a bill that would require lawmakers to sign off before a president can set up a national monument.
Murkowski introduced similar legislation in the past. But spokesman Matthew Felling says the senator has new concerns about the president's agenda for Alaska.
Unalaska has tapped a veteran local administrator as its interim city manager.
Donald Moore will fill in for Unalaska's outgoing city manager, Chris Hladick, who's leaving the job after 14 years to become the state's new commerce commissioner.
Moore is a former Cordova and Mat-Su Borough manager who's been a professional fill-in around Alaska for many years, in places like Dillingham, Whittier and Palmer. Unalaska Mayor Shirley Marquardt says he came highly recommended by the city of Nome and the Bristol Bay Borough.
City staff say the grant for the Iliuliuk River doesn't cover the cost of its own requirements. (Annie Ropeik/KUCB)
City council will consider giving back a quarter of a million dollars in grant money for cleaning up the Iliuliuk River at their meeting tonight.
The grant requires the installation of a certain amount of riverbank revegetation, stairs and walkways, plus a fish weir to count salmon at the church hole in the lower river. The state has said they won’t fund the project unless all those elements are completed.
Pyramid Peak in snow last winter, seen from the Unalaska Valley side of the trail. (Lauren Rosenthal/KUCB)
Unalaska police believe they’ve found the body of a hiker who went missing on Pyramid Peak on Sunday.
Jessica Acker, 33, apparently left Westward Seafoods for a hike near Pyramid on Sunday afternoon. She was reported missing when she didn’t return that night.
Late Monday afternoon, a search team spotted a person who appeared to have fallen down a snowy ravine.
Halibut harvests have been on the decline in the Bering Sea for several years. But the amount that trawlers and catcher-processors are allowed to take incidentally has stayed the same.
Now, fishery regulators have agreed to consider stiffer limits on halibut bycatch.
The North Pacific Fishery Management Council voted to study the impact of cutting the 10 million-pound bycatch limit by as much as 50 percent.
Pyramid Peak in snow last winter, seen from the Unalaska Valley side of the trail. (Lauren Rosenthal/KUCB)
Unalaska police and the Coast Guard are searching for a missing woman who didn’t return from an apparent hike in the Pyramid Peak area Sunday night.
Jessica Acker, 33, is a fisheries observer working for Alaskan Observers at Westward Seafoods.
Police Chief Jamie Sunderland says she appears to have taken her hiking gear and left for a hike early Sunday afternoon, possibly in the Pyramid area above Westward.
On Thursday, the two councils that control halibut fishing in the Bering Sea met to address a thorny debate over bycatch.
The International Pacific Halibut Commission -- which sets catch limits in waters stretching from Canada to the Pribilof Islands -- stopped into Seattle for a joint session with the North Pacific Fishery Management Council.
Together, the groups looked at options for counting and cutting back on the halibut that trawlers and catcher-processors scoop up while pursuing other species.
