Vincent Tutiakoff and Arnold Dushkin (L-R). Credit: Lauren Adams
Elders from around the Aleutians gathered at the Grand Aleutian Hotel earlier this month for a summit on healthcare and aging. Most of their time was spent in workshops, but they carved out space for a potluck dinner of traditional foods at Unalaska's senior center.
That night, a few elders shared stories of their first subsistence hunts. KUCB's Lauren Rosenthal was there, and has this audio postcard of Larry Dirks of Atka, Vincent Tutiakoff of Unalaska, and Arnold Dushkin of Nikolski discussing the subsistence way of life.
The Coast Guard hoisted a 43-year-old crewman with multiple injuries off the F/V Alaska Juris Friday afternoon. According to the Coast Guard, the crewman had been struck in the head with a box of frozen fish.
The 238-foot catcher-processor was about 200 miles southeast of Unalaska when the incident occurred, and repositioned to the north in order to rendezvous with a Coast Guard helicopter from the cutter Boutwell. The patient was hoisted from the Alaska Juris, and transported to Unalaska for further medical care.
Captain Billy Pepper Playing Taps on the Harmonica, Courtesy of US Fish & Wildlife Service
Seventy years ago, American forces recaptured the Aleutian Island of Attu from the Japanese, in the only ground battle fought on U.S. soil during the war. The fighting, which ended on May 30, 1943, took a heavy toll on both sides, but the battle is often forgotten by the history books.
Earlier this month, in an effort to remember both the soldiers and the 44 Unangan villagers who lost their homes on the island, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service installed a memorial on Attu. KUCB’s Stephanie Joyce reports.
The Commerce Department appointed one new member, and one old, to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council Thursday.
Duncan Fields will retain his seat for a third term as one of Alaska’s representatives on the council. Fields is a fisherman and natural resources consultant from Kodiak.
David Long will take over Councilor Sam Cotten’s seat. Cotten would have been eligible for a third term, but wasn’t nominated by Gov. Sean Parnell. Long is a commercial fisherman from Wasilla.
The sockeye are running out at Cape Wislow, and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game is keeping a close eye on the numbers.
ADF&G set up a weir at McLees Lake on June 5, and has already counted 3,500 salmon making their way upstream. Assistant Area Management Biologist Nat Nichols says that’s a pretty average return for this time of year.
“About a third of the way to the lower end of our escapement goal. The goal is 10,000 to 60,000.”
The Aleutian Islands’ community development quota group is branching out. They’re currently in the final stages of a deal to buy Cannon Fish Company, a Seattle seafood marketer and supplier. The acquisition is meant to help the CDQ group behave more like a big-time seafood business.
The Aleutian Pribilof Island Community Development Association, or APICDA, was founded on fish. The group owns all of part of about two dozen fishing vessels, which harvest their federal quotas of pollock, cod, halibut, and sablefish.
The equipment from Adak’s fish processing plant was auctioned off in one piece Tuesday morning. The City of Adak and the Adak Community Development Corporation jointly submitted the winning bid of $1.8 million.
Rhode Island-based Independence Bank was selling the equipment in the wake of Icicle Seafoods’ departure from Adak earlier this year. They offered it up wholesale first, and the Adak partnership outbid two other potential buyers -- one unidentified, and Anchorage-based Rotating Services, LLC.
The $1.8 million bid bought all of the equipment inside the plant – from the cod processing lines to the forklifts. It didn’t, however, come with a lease on the facility, which is owned by Aleut Enterprise.
It’s been a rocky 12 years since Adak was incorporated as a city.
The community has survived power crises, crushing debt, and twice, the closure of its biggest business -- the fish processing plant. Now Adak is facing a new setback.
On Tuesday, the processing plant’s equipment will be auctioned off, and as KUCB’s Stephanie Joyce reports, if it leaves the island, Adak will be left without its economic engine.
In the wake of several high-profile cases of alleged scale-tampering by Bering Sea groundfish vessels, the National Marine Fisheries Service is revising its regulations for weighing fish at-sea. The new measures are aimed at making it more difficult for vessels to underreport their catch.
The Bering Sea’s large catcher-processors weigh their harvest as it heads to the processing line on what’s known as a flow-scale – a section of conveyor belt that takes dozens of measurements per second. When properly calibrated, flow-scales give fisheries managers a very accurate estimate of the amount of fish being harvested. But like all scales, they can be manipulated.
