Unalaska, AK – "What's the New What" was a youth radio series that ran on NPR last year. Young people from around the country talked about the new trends that replace the old ones. Shawna Rudio's broadcasting class is creating their own version of this series. The first piece is by Ariel Gustafson Shapsnikoff. She explains that the tattoo is the new locket.

Unalaska, AK – Three Raiders wrestlers recently competed at the state wide wrestling championship. Senior Cameron Lynch took third place overall in the 215 pound weight class.

The journey to state began when the three seniors traveled to the regionals competition in New Stuyahawk the first weekend in December. All three made it to state. Lynch said he faced a tough battle against Quentin Backford of Dillingham, but he defeated him.

Unalaska, AK – The North Pacific Fishery Management Council officially set the 2010 pollock quota at 813,000 metric tons for 2010, 2,000 metric tons less than 2009. It's the lowest quota in 32 years. It is based on recommendations from the groundfish plan team, which used survey data to set the level. Last year biologists at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center predicted that the population would increase and quotas would go up again for 2010. That was not the case this year, but they make the same prediction for next year because survey results showed a strong 2008 year class.

Unalaska, AK – This year's International Pacific Halibut Commission stock survey shows that the halibut stock in the Aleutians is improving and the preliminary commercial catch recommendations for 2010 are increased. The commission's staff recommends increasing the overall halibut catch limit for the Aleutians, called Area 4, from 4.42 million pounds to 4.69 million. That's a significant difference from the overall catch for Alaska, British Columbia, and the Pacific Northwest, which is being cut by 10 percent from this year's catch.

Unalaska, AK – The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released their draft catch share policy Thursday. The policy encourages fishery management councils around the country to adopt catch share programs like the ones already in place for the Bering Sea crab fisheries and for the pollock fishery.

"What this new policy is doing is urging every council to actively consider catch shares for different fisheries," said NOAA administrator Dr. Jane Lubchenco as she spoke with reporters over a teleconference.

Unalaska, AK – APL ships will be arriving in Unalaska as planned, despite the fall of their crane. The ships will be loaded and unloaded at the city dock using the Horizon Lines crane. Horizon Lines terminal operations managers Bruce McConnell said their crane is smaller than the APL one, but that they can work around the problem. APL will rearrange the containers on the ship when docked in California so they are stacked two high instead of six high and are within 13 containers from the dock. The Horizon crane is shorter thus cannot reach as high, and it can only extend out 13 or 14 containers whereas the APL crane could reach out 17 or 18 containers.

Unalaska, AK –
Shell Oil received conditional approval today from the Department of the Interior to drill three exploratory wells in the Chukchi Sea. However, the company is still waiting for an air discharge permit from the Environmental Protection Agency and for the Secretary of the Interior to provide more environmental analysis to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Shell Oil spokesperson Curtis Smith says the company will not commit to any drilling or staging plans until they are certain they can get the final permit. The company spent $2.1 billion dollars on their Chukchi lease areas. Smith says they do not want to commit millions more in exploratory drilling preparation until they are certain the permits will go through. That means that even though Shell favors Unalaska as a staging ground for exploratory operations in the Arctic, the ships will not necessarily come through here this summer.

Unalaska, AK – Workers at the cattle ranch on Umnak Island found the top half of a human skull and turned it in to the authorities last week. According to police reports, a person brought the skull first to the Museum of the Aleutians, but staff said they could not accept it and told them to take it to Public Safety. The Department of Public Safety had the skull taken to the Alaska State Troopers because it was found outside of the city.

Unalaska, AK – A massive storm rocked Unalaska on Friday night and toppled the 110 foot high APL cargo container crane. Winds started kicking up around 6 pm and by about 8 pm wind speeds ranged from 80 miles per hour to about 125 miles per hour. Some sources are saying they went even higher.

Around 8:45 pm wind knocked over the multiple ton APL crane. No one was injured. APL spokesperson Mike Zampa, who is based in California, said they are not sure if the crane was or was not properly pegged or tied down. The accident is under investigation. It is also unclear if the crane can be salvaged. Zampa said the company is working on plans to keep operations in Unalaska running.