Last week the State Department of Labor released a report detailing trends in Alaska’s residential construction. Building has fallen off statewide in recent years and housing prices have flat-lined. But in Unalaska, the numbers don’t show dramatic changes.
Home construction in the rest of the state tapered off around 2006 and tanked in 2009, following the national housing market meltdown. The sample size for Unalaska isn’t huge, but it doesn’t show much of a response to those trends. Three new houses went up in 2006, two in 2009 and five in 2010.
Groundfish quotas, the effects of crab rationalization, and the merits of a halibut catch share plan are the big items on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council’s agenda this week.
Their December meeting opened up at the Anchorage Hilton this morning. The council spent today listening to reports, but starting tomorrow they will begin discussing the amount of pollock, Pacific cod, and other groundfish that fishermen should be allowed to catch in the Bering Sea. There is a 2 million metric ton limit on how much groundfish can be harvested, and yesterday the council’s science and statistical committee determined that the proportion of that being taken from the pollock fishery should be capped at 1.22 million metric tons. That’s a slight drop from last year’s acceptable biological catch of 1.270 million metric tons.
Commercial fishing is risky business, and managing that risk doesn’t come cheap. The Coast Guard’s Commercial Fishing Vessel Safety Advisory Committee is tasked with figuring out ways to make the industry as safe as possible without putting people out of business with burdensome costs. They meet twice a year, and they come up with recommendations for how the Coast Guard can improve its safety policy.
The fishing industry isn’t getting any younger, and the so-called “graying of the fleet” has even got some state legislators concerned. But while fishermen are getting older on average, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a new generation eager to enter the industry.
KUCB’s Alexandra Gutierrez went out with some of these younger fishermen for a special pub crawl in Ballard and has this story.
Every year, Alaska fishermen descend upon Seattle for the Pacific Marine Expo, more commonly known as Fish Expo. But some years have a better turn out than others, and that often has to do with how good the fishing was in the state.
Next year’s pollock numbers might not change much after all.
Management biologists met yesterday in Seattle to come up with a recommendation for next year’s harvest levels. A draft assessment had suggested that allowable biological catch -- the upper threshold for the harvest level -- should be put at 1.08 million metric tons, a 14 percent drop over this year’s quota. The assessment noted that the results of the pollock survey were lower than expected, catch rates by fishermen were low this fall, and there’s still uncertainty about the amount of young pollock in the Bering Sea.
Despite being the number one fishing port in the United States by volume and number two by value, Unalaska has the smallest number of resident commercial permit holders of any major fishing community in the state.
The industry group United Fishermen of Alaska recently compiled commercial fisheries and seafood processing data for 18 port communities.
Their survey shows that in 2010 Unalaska and the Aleutians West Borough had only 38 locally-owned commercial fishing permits. That’s compared to communities like Homer, Kodiak and Petersburg, which each had more than a thousand resident permits.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has opened up the 30-day public comment period for Shell’s Chukchi Sea Exploration Plan.
The document details a proposal to drill up to six wells in the Chukchi, starting in July of 2012.
The opening of the public comment period comes just days after Alaska Senator Mark Begich sent a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar asking the BOEM to release a review schedule for the Plan.
The Horizon Lines cargo dock in Unalaska shutdown yesterday (Nov 13) over worker concerns about potentially explosive refrigerated containers.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union notified members up and down the West Coast last week that some refrigerated containers or “reefers” passing through the port could be explosive.
ILWU spokesperson Craig Merrilees says the coolant in some reefers was contaminated earlier this year during maintenance work in Vietnam.
