As Shell tries to chart a course back to the Arctic this summer, the company is looking for new space to store its drill rigs in Unalaska.
Shell has asked the Alaska Department of Natural Resources to sign off on three moorage sites for the Noble Discoverer and the Polar Pioneer -- all on on state-owned tidelands. If they’re approved, the rigs could cycle through Wide Bay, Nateekin Bay, and the edge of Summer Bay until 2019.
The violations happened aboard the M/V City of Tokyo in 2014. (Courtesy: U.S. Attorney's Office)
A shipping company has pleaded guilty to illegally dumping oily bilge water in the eastern Aleutians last summer.
AML Ship Management of Germany agreed to pay $800,000 in fines for Clean Water Act violations that happened on a vehicle carrier in August 2014.
AML has admitted that the chief engineer of the M/V City of Tokyo used a pump hooked up to the bilge tank to discharge the water straight overboard, without filtering it through pollution equipment first. The vessel was 165 miles south of Sanak Island at the time.
Halibut harvests have been on the decline in the Bering Sea for several years. But the amount that trawlers and catcher-processors are allowed to take incidentally has stayed the same.
Now, fishery regulators have agreed to consider stiffer limits on halibut bycatch.
The North Pacific Fishery Management Council voted to study the impact of cutting the 10 million-pound bycatch limit by as much as 50 percent.
On Thursday, the two councils that control halibut fishing in the Bering Sea met to address a thorny debate over bycatch.
The International Pacific Halibut Commission -- which sets catch limits in waters stretching from Canada to the Pribilof Islands -- stopped into Seattle for a joint session with the North Pacific Fishery Management Council.
Together, the groups looked at options for counting and cutting back on the halibut that trawlers and catcher-processors scoop up while pursuing other species.
The Bering Sea fishing fleet lost a shipmate last fall, when 45-year-old Paul Garcia died in Unalaska.
Fishing in the remote waters of the Bering Sea can be an isolating experience. Crews spend months at a time away from home, working long hours in rough conditions.
But for Garcia, the job was a way to connect with people and places that were way outside the norm.
Despite falling oil prices, Royal Dutch Shell will aim to restart its Arctic drilling program this summer.
Executives announced those plans during a quarterly earnings call with shareholders and reporters on Thursday. Chief financial officer Simon Henry said Shell will have to make a significant investment if it’s going to get back to Alaska.
"If we drill, if we go ahead, it will be over a billion dollars," Henry said.
After several years of poor salmon returns along the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers, federal managers are considering new ways to cut back on salmon bycatch in the commercial pollock fishery.
The North Pacific Fishery Management Council will hold a statewide teleconference on Thursday to discuss their options for reducing bycatch in the Bering Sea.
"We’re hosting this teleconference to allow people the opportunity to hear about the alternatives that are being considered,” says NPFMC staff member Steve MacLean. “To learn something about the council process and how they can become involved in that council process, and then to voice questions and concerns they might have about the action currently being evaluated.”
The Interior Department is preparing to withdraw areas of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas from future oil and gas lease sales.
Almost 10 million acres would be off-limits under the draft five-year plan that Interior released today.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski described the decision as a gut punch to Alaska’s economy. But Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said the withdrawals aren't drastic.
"[Most] already were deferred from oil and gas leasing," Jewell says. "And I don’t think anybody who looks at those maps would say that that is an unreasonable amount."
