Emergency crews were still combing through the Sea of Okhotsk on Friday. (Credit: Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations)
Rescuers in Russia are continuing to search for crew members from a sunken factory trawler.
The Dalny Vostok capsized on Wednesday with 132 people on board. So far, 56 have been reported dead and 13 are still missing, according to the Voice of America.
The mostly Russian crew was out fishing for pollock this week in the Sea of Okhotsk off the Kamchatka Peninsula. It’s not clear what caused their 338-foot vessel to flip and sink.
The lights could dim over Unalaska this week as utility workers test out the city’s newest diesel generator.
The fourth engine will be switched on Wednesday at 12 p.m. Utility director Dan Winters says it will operate at a quarter of its full capacity before workers begin ramping up the load.
"So that could take a day," Winters says. "Or if we see any problems during that process, we’ll shut it down, fix any issues we may have and then bring it back up and start over where we left off at."
Royal Dutch Shell cleared a major hurdle on Tuesday in its quest to return to the Arctic.
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell decided to uphold the sale where Shell purchased many of its offshore leases in the Chukchi Sea -- including the ones the company wants to explore this summer.
But until today, those leases were in limbo. A federal appeals judge ruled that the government hadn’t come up with an accurate estimate of how much development would take place in the Arctic as a result of the auction.
Horizon Lines' local freight delivery comes into the Unalaska Marine Center every Friday. (Annie Ropeik/KUCB)
An open bidding process for new long-term shipping contracts at the Unalaska Marine Center will go to a vote when city council meets on Tuesday.
It’s the culmination of weeks of back-and-forth between the city, council and residents about the best way to secure a long-term user at the dock while preserving local freight service.
The request for proposals council will vote on hasn’t changed from what they considered earlier this month, and still includes extra points for companies that use local labor.
Ryan Fry sets up crab pots outside the F/V Farrar Sea in Unalaska earlier this month. (Annie Ropeik/KUCB)
Bering Sea crab fishermen are trying to get through as much Bairdi tanner quota as they can before the season ends next week. This year’s huge allocation put the fleet in a time crunch -- and future seasons could bring more of the same.
That's thanks in part to a change in the species' preferred size -- the smallest crab that harvesters want to sell. The Board of Fisheries unanimously voted last week to decrease that size from 5.5 to 5 inches.
Shell Oil has replaced one of its top executives in charge of exploration off the coast of Alaska.
As vice president of Shell's Alaska venture, Pete Slaiby traveled the state to build support for Arctic drilling and defend the program against its critics.
He left Anchorage almost two months ago for a new job at Shell's corporate headquarters. An engineer by training, Slaiby's now in charge of decommissioning and restoring equipment throughout the company.
Spokesperson Megan Baldino says that change is not related to problems the company faced during its last Arctic drilling season.
Dock workers offload a weekly mail and grocery delivery from the Horizon Kodiak on a recent Friday. (Annie Ropeik/KUCB)
City officials went head-to-head with union workers on Tuesday, trying to assure them that they’d keep their jobs once the city finds an anchor tenant for the Unalaska Marine Center.
City manager Chris Hladick says he expects they’ll only have interest from companies who would use the established local workforce.
"We never envisioned that this would become about the labor," he said. "This is about growing."
