Dead herring on an Unalaska beach on Wednesday. KUCB/John Ryan photo.
Hundreds of dead herring washed up on Front Beach in downtown Unalaska on Tuesday.
“Hundreds of herring floating in the water,” Caleb Livingston, who lives nearby, said as he was walking his dog Hazel on the beach. “But what really got my attention was the few that drifted on the beach were not being eaten by the eagles, or seagulls or terns.”
Unalaska’s population could nearly double Sept. 15 when the Celebrity Millennium docks here.
Community leaders are worried enough, they’re holding a town hall meeting on how to handle—and help—the onslaught of tourists at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Burma Road Chapel.
“It’s going to be overwhelming,” Unalaska/Dutch Harbor ports director Peggy McLaughlin said.
The Fennica and its yellow capping stack in Alaska's Dutch Harbor on July 18. KUCB/John Ryan photo.
Shell’s wayward icebreaker made it to the company’s Arctic Ocean drilling site Tuesday. The arrival of the Fennica after a month’s delay means the company could get to drill for oil beneath the Chukchi Sea this summer.
Currently, Shell only has permission to do shallower drilling into non-oil-bearing rocks off Alaska’s northwest coast.
With the Fennica steaming toward the Arctic, Shell submitted an application to the Interior Department on Thursday for permission to drill into deeper, oil-bearing rocks.
A right whale in the southeastern Bering Sea in 2005. Photo: Brenda Rone/NOAA Fisheries.
Researchers are cruising the Gulf of Alaska on the lookout for one of the world’s rarest animals: the North Pacific right whale.
Their needle-in-a-haystack quest is made slightly easier by one fact: These needles make noise.
Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration left Kodiak on Sunday for a month-long research cruise to track down the critically endangered whales.
The U.S. Coast Guard released video of a man and a pregnant woman spinning up from their Yo Yo and onto a Coast Guard helicopter Sunday. The engine of the Yo Yo, a 29-foot fishing boat based out of Dillingham, was disabled and operating at low power in Bristol Bay off of Togiak.
The Fennica in Alaska's Dutch Harbor on Aug. 6. KUCB/John Ryan photo.
Shell Oil’s Fennica icebreaker departed Dutch Harbor, Alaska, for the Arctic Thursday afternoon, a day and a half after it arrived from Oregon.
The Fennica is now headed north on the 1,100-mile voyage to Shell’s Chukchi Sea drilling site.
The Fennica’s arrival in the Chukchi has been delayed by about a month after the icebreaker ran aground in Dutch Harbor on July 3. It then went through repairs and protests in Portland.
Mihey Basargin of Wasilla on the docks in Dutch Harbor after being rescued. KUCB/John Ryan photo.
Two fishermen were rescued from their boat grounded off Unalga Island in the eastern Aleutians on Tuesday.
A Coast Guard helicopter crew from Air Station Kodiak hoisted the men to safety about 1 pm. The two were flown to Dutch Harbor and did not require medical attention.
The owner and skipper of the Alaskan Catch said he's glad he and his crewmate are unscathed, but his 35-foot boat is a total loss.
The Fennica approaching the Delta Western Fuel dock in Alaska's Dutch Harbor on Tuesday. KUCB/John Ryan photo.
8/6/2015 Update: The Fennica left Dutch Harbor for the Arctic Ocean Thursday afternoon.
Shell's Fennica icebreaker has returned to Alaska. It docked at Dutch Harbor Tuesday evening after enduring repairs and protests in Portland, Oregon.
Shell began drilling the top of a well in the Chukchi Sea last week, but it does not have federal permission from the U.S. Interior Department to drill into oil-bearing rocks unless the Fennica is on site.
Kids learn to prepare salmon at the Qawalangin Tribe of Unalaska's Camp Qungaayux. KUCB/John Ryan photo.
The annual Camp Qungaayux (kuh-NIGH-you, the Unangan word for humpback salmon) runs this week in Unalaska. It’s the Qawalangin Tribe’s annual culture camp. Now in its 18th year passing down traditional Aleut culture, it’s become a tradition of its own.
TRANSCRIPT
Shangin: “My name is Barbara Shangin. I am actually going to teach children how to weave. I’m a teacher at heart, so I love to share my knowledge with the kids. Because I live in Anchorage, it helps me. I love coming down here because it rejuvenates me as a Unangan person because I can speak my language, get in touch with the environment, the food that we eat.”
