The Bering Sea red king crab fleet finished catching 10 million pounds of quota last week -- and they're facing some lackluster prices as the crab goes to market. It could be due to higher catch limits in Alaska and Russia.
There’s also the problem of pirates. Illegal crab harvesting is declining, but industry groups say it’s still their biggest concern.
KUCB’s Annie Ropeik reports on what impact it had this year.
A pair of coastal senators -- including Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski -- are racing against the clock to extend an environmental exemption for small-boat fishermen.
Right now, vessel operators aren’t required to hold permits for spilling bilge water or deckwash if their boats are less than 79 feet long. But that waiver is set to expire next month. Legislation that would have made it permanent has stalled out in Congress.
The United Nations is on the verge of passing a new set of maritime laws for the Arctic, ahead of a projected increase in shipping traffic across the North Pole.
The new laws are called the Polar Code, and they come from the U.N.’s International Maritime Organization. This week in London, the IMO will vote on half of the new policy. It includes protections for Arctic marine mammals.
The president of Unalaska's biggest processing company has passed away. Terry Shaff, 67, died this weekend shortly after he began treatment for pancreatic cancer.
Shaff served as UniSea's top executive for 16 years. But his first job at the company was on the ground in Unalaska. When Shaff arrived in the early 1990s, the company was still breaking down fish on a barge.
"It just started out as almost like a remote fish camp and [he] built it right up into a city," says Chris Plaisance, UniSea's corporate human resources director.
An appeals court has tossed out a request by Shell Oil to block future challenges from environmental groups against Arctic drilling operations.
Shell filed the lawsuit against 13 environmental and tribal organizations back in 2012. The oil company wanted a formal declaration that its government-approved spill response plans were legal. They hoped it would help them block hypothetical lawsuits down the road.
Horizon Lines has operated from the Unalaska Marine Center for more than 20 years. (Annie Ngo/KUCB)
After years of financial trouble, Horizon Lines has announced plans to sell off its routes in Alaska and Hawaii.
Horizon has accrued more than half a billion dollars' worth of debt. Chief financial officer Michael Avara says they tried refinancing and restructing, but it just wasn’t sustainable.
Pollock processors at UniSea's G2 plant in Unalaska. (Lauren Rosenthal/KUCB)
Alaska's minimum wage initiative flew mostly under the radar this fall, overshadowed by high-profile Congressional races. But ballot measure three proposes a big change to state's minimum wage structure -- increasing it by two dollars over the next two years, to $9.75 an hour. After that, it would be adjusted for inflation.
In Unalaska, at least 83 percent of voters supported that plan. The seafood industry -- which is the biggest source of minimum wage jobs in Unalaska -- didn't expect anything less.
Leading up to the election, they were already considering ways to scale back their workforce.
Federal regulators are standing behind their decision to sell oil and gas leases in the Chukchi Sea, after a court-ordered review of how development would affect the Arctic.
The lease sale held in 2008 was supposed to yield about 1 billion barrels of oil. Based on sale data and current economic conditions, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management says the potential is much higher -- just over 4 billion barrels. But the agency doesn't recommend that the sale be reversed.
