A crew member from the 42-foot F/V Taurus died after falling overboard near King Cove Friday morning. A Good Samaritan vessel found the deceased, but the Coast Guard isn’t releasing the crew member’s name or any details about the incident until next of kin have been notified.
Petty Officer Jonathan Klingenberg says four vessels from King Cove participated in the search, along with two Coast Guard aircraft.
The Bering Sea pollock catcher-processor American Dynasty collided with a Canadian navy frigate Tuesday morning in the British Columbia port of Esquimalt.
Cindy Harnett is a reporter for the Times Colonist, a daily newspaper in Victoria, BC, and has been following the story.
Harnett spoke with KUCB’s Stephanie Joyce about the incident.
Just two years after reopening, the seafood processing plant in Adak is shutting down. Icicle Seafoods didn’t return calls for comment, but in a press release, CEO Amy Humphreys cites regulatory uncertainty as the deciding factor.
Fishing in the western Aleutians has been restricted in recent years to protect an endangered stock of Steller sea lions, and an anticipated division of the Pacific cod harvest between the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands could also impact shore-based processors.
If you watched the season premiere of "Deadliest Catch" this week, you might have noticed a line in the credits acknowledging the Alaska Film Office’s contribution to the show.
It wasn’t just a reference to the fact that the show is filmed in Alaska -- the note was included because the state actually subsidizes the popular reality television series through its film tax credit program. But if some state legislators have their way, that won’t be the case for much longer.
After several years of declines, illegal crab fishing in Russia spiked in 2012. The resulting glut of crab hurt Alaskan prices, and reignited concerns about how to combat the poaching.
Andy Wink tracks the Russian fisheries for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute. He says Russia’s black market haul is staggering.
“Alaska caught a lot of crab. Alaska caught more crab in 2012 than they have for a long time. Despite that, Russia still caught more illegal crab [than Alaskan fishermen caught total].”
Two of Alaska’s largest tug and barge companies could merge later this year. Lynden Transport has signed an agreement to purchase Northland Services, pending regulatory approval.
Both companies provide regular service to Southeast and Southcentral Alaska, while Northland specializes in freight delivery to Western Alaska, including Unalaska and St. Paul. If the purchase is approved, Northland will still operate as its own company, under the same management.
Unalaska’s largest seafood processor has selected a future president and CEO. Tom Enlow will take over Terry Shaff’s job at UniSea at an unspecified future date.
Enlow is currently a vice president for the company, but until last month he managed the hospitality division of Unisea, including the Grand Aleutian Hotel. He says the switch will allow him to get a better feel for the seafood processing operations.
ConocoPhillips won’t be drilling in the Alaskan Arctic in 2014, the company announced Wednesday. The announcement follows on the heels of Shell’s decision to cancel its drilling season this year, and a report from the Department of the Interior calling for industry cooperation in developing Arctic drilling standards.
ConocoPhillips said in a statement that because of regulatory uncertainty it would “not be prudent at this time to make the significant monetary commitments needed to preserve the option to drill in 2014.”
The company has 98 exploratory leases in the Chukchi Sea, and had been planning to drill one or two wells next summer with a jack-up rig specifically designed for the Arctic. In the statement, ConocoPhillips says it will reevaluate its options once the requirements for drilling in the Alaskan offshore are clearer.
Statoil had previously announced that it has no plans to drill in the Arctic before 2015, so ConocoPhillips' announcement leaves Shell as the only company that hasn’t nixed drilling next year.
