Unalaska Bay will remain open to pollock trawling, but only during the months of September and October. On Thursday, the Alaska Board of Fisheries rejected the total ban proposed by the Unalaska Native Fishermen’s Association, and instead voted to open the season a month later than current regulation specifies.
Historically, most of the trawlers’ landings in the bay have been in August. So, several Board members reasoned that closing the bay to fishing for that month would reduce the overall harvest from the bay.
Nick Golodoff, author of the book Attu Boy, passed away earlier this month at the age of 77. His memoir about the World War II internment of the Aleut village by the Japanese brought attention to one of the most obscure corners of American history.
He was born on the western Aleutian island of Agattu in December 1935, while his parents were fox trapping.
The 72-hour track of the M/V Bangkok Bridge, starting Tuesday. Image courtesy of Rick Sypeck/Marine Exchange of Alaska
For the second time this month, a vessel transiting the Great Circle shipping route has sought safe harbor in Unalaska. The 876-ft Bangkok Bridge was drifting in Unimak Pass Wednesday after losing power to its engines.
Coast Guard Lieutenant Jim Fothergill says the cutter Munro had already loaded up Unalaska’s emergency towing system before the operation was called off.
“They were able to refire their engines probably around 11 o’clock [Wednesday] night.”
A Grant Aviation flight crashed while landing at the Unalaska airport Saturday afternoon, after the apparent collapse of the plane’s landing gear. The pilot and two passengers walked away unharmed.
Unalaska Fire Chief Abner Hoage says there was a small fuel leak in the left wing. Fire crews stopped leak and contained the spilled fuel with absorbent boom.
The plane is a Piper PA-31 Navajo. Neither Grant Aviation nor the Department of Transportation could be reached for information about where the flight originated, or how the crash will affect flight traffic at the airport. The only scheduled Grant Aviation flights for Saturday originated in Akun.
They're often overshadowed by the larger Bering Sea fleets, but Unalaska has a handful of small boat commercial fishermen who make their living in the waters around the Aleutian Islands.
During the recent tanner crab fishery, KUCB’s Stephanie Joyce headed out to see what it’s like to be a small boat in big boat territory.
Road raveling at the intersection of Airport Beach Road and Broadway
Last summer, Unalaska residents endured lengthy construction delays during the repaving of Airport Beach Road and Broadway, and they can expect more of the same this summer. Despite the amount of time Granite Construction spent on the project, the surface isn’t holding up.
“You can see that the rocks are beginning to pop out of the pavement, which isn’t supposed to happen,” city manager Chris Hladick says. “So, we’re in a dispute with the contractor. We’d like them to fix that, and the other places that are raveling. And there are also some other places where they didn’t get the right slope of the road. You can see, like in front of ITC, that there’s water standing on the road. That’s not supposed to happen.”
For now, the deterioration of the roadway isn’t a huge problem, but Hladick says in a few years, it will be.
Unalaska’s emergency responders had their hands full Monday afternoon when two fishing vessels at opposite sides of the island reported injuries.
Fire chief Abner Hoage says the F/V American Dynasty was pulling into port at the Kloosterboer cold storage dock around 3 pm when the boat suddenly listed to the side. A few crew members lost their footing and fell. Hoage says the vessel's medical staff called Unalaska EMS to pick up one crew member.
Winter has brought another outbreak of flu to Unalaska. Eileen Conlon Scott is the director of the Iliuliuk Family and Health Services Clinic. She says her staff have seen plenty of flu patients over the past few months.
Now that A-season is underway, Scott says the bug is spreading in the bunkhouses at the processing plants.
"I mean, people are coming in vanloads," Scott says.
The wild winter weather isn’t over yet. Chris Burling is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Anchorage. He says while the worst has past, the storm system that dropped several feet of snow on Unalaska over the weekend will continue through Wednesday.
“Temperatures are going to continue to warm as that front moves northward, so you’re going to start seeing more rain mixing in the with the snow as we go through the afternoon," says Burling. "But you could still see a couple more inches before it’s all said and done.”
The center of the storm registered around 970 millibars, which isn’t too far out of the ordinary for the Aleutians at this time of year, but Burling says the storm’s behavior was what caused the huge snowfall.
