All 20,000 pounds of ammonia on board the processing vessel Excellence have vented.  Coast Guard Lt. James Fothergill said a marine chemist visited the ship Thursday afternoon, and certified that it is now safe for personnel to enter.

Magone Marine towed the Excellence back to their dock from Wide Bay for repairs. While the ship is being fixed, its crew will offload 300 tons of frozen pollock stored inside since the accident. Excellence crew first reported the ammonia leak last Friday, while the ship was tied up at the Kloosterboer cold storage dock. The leak didn’t stop until Wednesday afternoon.

Alaska Airlines is back in the running for Adak’s Essential Air Service contract. The airline currently flies a Boeing 737-Combi to Adak twice a week, but said earlier this year it wouldn’t try to renew its contract for the federally subsidized flight route. But on Wednesday, in a letter to the DOT, the airline said, “Alaska is now undertaking a new analysis to determine whether it will now decide to do so.”

After last year’s triple disaster in Japan, a group of Alaskan fishermen started collecting funds to help rebuild the country’s decimated fishing industry. Earlier this month, the first of those donations made it to Japan.

The fishing village of Arahama lies on the outskirts of Sendai, a large city in northern Japan. Canadian filmmaker Linda Ohama was there last month.

“They’re trying to get back on their feet and they’re having to deal with a lot," Ohama says. "Number one, the loss of their fishing equipment and boats. And they’re dealing with the radiation factor.”

A coalition of environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the federal government Tuesday morning over Shell's Arctic oil spill response plan. The lawsuit is not intended to stop Shell from drilling in the Arctic this year, but it is supposed to change the way the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement deals with future permitting. That office approved Shell's response plan in case of a spill in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas.

Heavy ice in the Bering Sea this winter carried away a mountain of crab gear. Fishermen lost about 800 pots over the course of the snow crab season, or about six percent of their total gear.

“Just for comparison, in the past two snow crab seasons, gear loss rates were between 1-2 percent," says Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist Britta Baechler.

Each crab pot is worth between $1000 and $1500, which means the fishery lost about a million dollars worth of gear overall. This year’s record-breaking sea ice is the primary culprit. The ice can cut buoy lines or drag pots miles from where they were set. Baechler says the doubling of the snow crab quota was probably also a factor.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council is one of a handful of regional task forces that advises the federal Department of Commerce on fisheries regulations. New appointments to the council were announced last week, and some were surprised to see that Washington Governor Christine Gregoire's top choice was passed over a spot on the council.

Wesley Loy, who runs the fishing blog Deckboss, spoke with KUCB's Lauren Rosenthal about the NPFMC appointments, and how they could impact the North Pacific fisheries.

Shell’s drill ships left Seattle Wednesday morning, headed for Unalaska on their way to the Arctic. The ships were originally scheduled to bypass town, but now it looks like they might be around for a while.

Persistent sea ice in the Alaskan Arctic could delay the start of the drilling season by two to three weeks, according to Shell Alaska spokesperson Curtis Smith. The company had hoped to start work in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas on July 15.

Unalaska isn’t the only Aleutian port that could see development as a result of offshore and gas drilling. A recent agreement between Offshore Systems Inc and the Aleut Corporation could result in the conversion of Adak’s former military facilities to an oil and gas support hub. But it’s not yet clear whether that will mean less business for Unalaska.

City manager Chris Hladick was expecting proposals for development of other ports in the Aleutians or along the west coast of Alaska.

“At this point in the planning stages of development, of exploration and actual development of the oil, anything is open for these folks to look at," he says. "So, in some respects, it’s a competition.”

As a major commercial fishing port, Hladick says Unalaska already has the upper hand.

“We not only have the docks, we have the industry here set up, ready to go," he says. "Yeah, it might need some expansion, but we understand what it takes to get a ship in and get it out.”

Unalaska is already the staging site for Shell Oil’s support vessels, as they head up north this summer to do exploratory drilling the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. But the near-term commitment might not mean much in the long run. cont

United Fishermen of Alaska, an organization representing 37 commercial fishing groups, is hiring a new executive director.

Mark Vinsel, who has held the position for eight years, is transitioning to the newly-created administrator position. He says it's recently become clear that the organization needs more than one employee.

“You know, during this eight years we’ve seen a proliferation of the number of different agencies, especially on the federal level, with which we need to be keep up to date with what’s going on that might affect fishermen.”