The port of Dutch Harbor will hang onto its title as the nation’s busiest fishing port for another year.
According to the latest rankings from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, about 753 million pounds of seafood were landed here in 2013. That’s more than any other port in America. It's also the 17th consecutive year Unalaska has gotten that distinction.
It’s mostly due to the large volume of pollock brought in from the Bering Sea, along with crab and other groundfish. Those deliveries were worth slightly less last year. But at $197 million, they were still the second most profitable in the nation.
Just days after crab season kicked off, the Coast Guard was called to airlift an injured fisherman this weekend.
The man was loading gear aboard the F/V Icy Mist on Sunday when he was struck by a crab pot. His arm and leg were hurt badly enough that a Coast Guard duty surgeon recommended a medevac.
The Icy Mist was about 150 miles south of Sand Point -- hours away from the nearest flight base.
Delta Western workers protest the firing of a coworker, Mo Reyes (center, in camouflage jacket), outside their Unalaska terminal Thursday. (Annie Ropeik/KUCB)
Six months ago, Delta Western fuel workers in Unalaska voted to unionize.
This morning, eight of them hit the picket line again -- over managers they say are trying to sidestep union rules.
Employee Mo Reyes was fired Monday for breaking Delta Western safety rules. He vacuumed out fueling equipment, which managers said could have caused an explosion under the wrong circumstances.
Reyes says his bosses were never that strict before.
Captain Moore Dye of the F/V Western Mariner gears up for crab season this week in Dutch Harbor. (Annie Ngo/KUCB)
Wednesday marked the opening of the Bering Sea crab season. Quotas are up almost across the board. But one species that usually takes a backseat is outshining the rest -- and that’s got some fishermen changing their game plans.
Two years ago, there was no harvest for Bairdi tanner crab. Without enough legal females in the water, it wasn’t safe to fish.
When the season reopened last year, the quota was kept low. But now, Bairdi seem to have bounced back.
A Seattle-based seafood company accused of stealing groundfish from the Bering Sea has agreed to pay up.
American Seafoods will pay $1.75 million to settle violations on three of its catcher-processors. The American Dynasty, the Ocean Rover, and the Northern Eagle were all accused of tampering with their scales for weighing fish at sea over a five-year period.
The Ounalashka Corporation will lease the tidelands, highlighted at left, for 50 years. (City of Unalaska)
City council voted to lease about three acres of tidelands near the Carl E. Moses Boat Harbor to the Ounalashka Corporation Tuesday night, over some concerns about the impacts of future developments.
The tidelands are on the back side of Little South America, around the point from the city harbor. OC wants to use them along with the uplands they already own to build a dock, barge loading facility and industrial complex.
Unalaska’s biggest processing plant has agreed to pay a $142,000 fine for allegedly lagging on safety procedures meant to prevent chemical spills.
UniSea keeps large quantities of ammonia on hand for refrigerating fish, plus chlorine for treating its water supply. The Clean Air Act requires facilities to maintain a risk management program for those chemicals.
The city of Unalaska is falling behind on construction of a new wastewater treatment plant -- and they could face up to $200,000 in federal fines as a result.
The city’s supposed to have the plant’s chlorination and dechlorination system online by the end of the year.
In mid-November, the city is supposed to make a formal request to Alaska regulators to start operating that system.
