On the eve of 'A' season’s start tomorrow, the state department of fish and game has announced parallel groundfish fisheries for 2014.
The annual emergency order means boats can partake in federal fisheries in state waters.
In the Bering Sea-Aleutian Islands district, there will be parallel Pacific cod and sablefish fisheries for jig gear vessels, as well as a parallel Pacific cod fishery for hook-and-line and pot gear vessels.
Canada’s energy authority gave conditional approval earlier this month to the Northern Gateway Pipeline project, which would run through British Columbia and would send hundreds more crude oil supertankers along high-traffic shipping lanes in Alaska waters.
That means the Aleutian Islands will have to prepare for a higher risk of spills and accidents.
The proposed pipeline stretches from Alberta, Canada, out to Kitimat, British Columbia, on the coast. It would carry 520,000 barrels of diluted oil sands bitumen a day.
A map of the new Dutch Harbor subdistrict fishery. /Courtesy: Alaska Department of Fish & Game
The state announced the 2014 guideline harvest levels for Pacific cod in the state-waters fisheries this week.
There will be about 17.86 million pounds of cod available for harvest, both in the Aleutian Islands state-waters fishery and in the new Dutch Harbor subdistrict.
In the Aleutians district, that’s about 12 percent less than last year’s harvest level.
The Aleutian district is divided into A and B season. A season will run Jan. 1 through June 9.
Slightly more walleye pollock will be up for harvest in the Bering Sea in 2014.
At a meeting in Anchorage last week, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council voted to bump up the catch limit to 1.267 million metric tons. That’s an increase of about 20,000 tons.
But many people in fishing industry told the council they should be allowed to take even more.
Donna Parker was one of them. She’s with the Arctic Storm Management Group, a pollock fishing company.
Erin Islzer gets ready to break a bottle of champagne on the new barge. /Credit: Annie Ropeik
A new barge that’ll make a weekly freight run to Akutan was christened last month at the city dock. KUCB’s Annie Ropeik has the story.
Evon Bereskin:[singing] "O master, preserve this oh ship, and give it a guardian angel..."
Father Evon Bereskin of Unalaska’s Holy Ascension Cathedral is blessing the new barge. It’s named the Iliuliuk Bay for the harbor where it’ll be based. The 250-foot vessel arrived from Portland in November.
A Coast Guard flight crew spent Thanksgiving rescuing a crew member from a container ship traveling past Unalaska.
The Kerveros was traveling along the Great Circle shipping route from Canada to China, about 100 miles outside Unalaska, when they called the Coast Guard for help Thursday morning.
Chief Petty Officer Sara Mooers says a 43-year-old Filipino crewman had fallen ill.
Shell Oil is taking measures to revive its troubled Arctic drilling program.
On Wednesday, the company filed an updated Arctic exploration plan with the Alaska office of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
John Callahan is a public affairs officer for BOEM. He says that even though it's based off the exploration plan Shell used in 2012, the new plan is a lot shorter.
"And what Shell submitted just focuses on the changed parts," Callahan says.
Shell Oil is still weighing its options for drilling in the Arctic next year. But any program would be scaled down compared to the company’s last trip north in 2012.
The Alaska Board of Fish voted to set up two new state-managed fisheries in the Aleutians at their meeting in Anchorage this week.
A Pacific cod fishery will open up in the Bering Sea north of Cape Sarichef each year starting a week after the federally managed parallel fishery, and stay open until the harvest is taken or August 28. The fishery will only be open to boats under 60 feet.
