The scrap heap at the Unalaska landfill is a metal recycler’s dream. You’ll see 70s-era cars and stoves, and plenty of valuable stainless steel and aluminum. City officials think there could be hundreds of millions of pounds of scrap on this island. It’s enough to make a metal recycler rich, but more than most can handle.
In 2008, an attempt to clear the junk failed when a contractor walked off the job after removing the biggest pieces of metal from the island. That caught Ron Moore’s attention last year. He and his wife Yvonne operate R.L. Moore Metal Recycling near Norfolk, Virginia. She found a news story about Unalaska’s recycling problem online and asked her husband to take a look.
The salmon may be running at Cape Wislow, but no one is keeping track of how many are spawning.
For the past decade, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has operated a weir at the run that connects Reese Bay to McLees Lake, giving the community accurate counts of how many sockeye salmon are making it up the stream. The federal grant for the program ran out last year, so the Alaska Department of Fish and Game agreed to take the weir over for the next three seasons.
An Unalaska student has been selected to take part in the Surgeon General’s anti-tobacco campaign.
Rachel Gulanes, a rising senior at Unalaska City School, appears alongside Surgeon General Regina Benjamin today in Seattle at a panel focused on youth and smoking. She’s just one of two Alaskans invited to speak at the town-hall event.
Gulanes started getting involved with anti-tobacco work when she was 14, but her advocacy began at home when she was much younger.
A Washington man was fatally injured while replacing a tire on Tuesday afternoon.
Anton Sullivan, 44, was working on the wheel of a truck when the split rim tire burst. Sullivan was struck in the head by the exploding unit and suffered severe trauma.
According to the Unalaska Department of Public Safety, the accident occurred along Ballyhoo Road and multiple responders were called to the scene. Sullivan was transported to the Iliuliuk Family and Health Services clinic for treatment, but died of his injuries approximately three hours after the accident.
Unemployment in Unalaska more than doubled in April, coinciding with the wind-down of a major fishing season.
The Alaska Department of Labor estimates that the unemployment rate was at 10.3 percent in April, up from 4.9 percent in March. The jump occurs regularly in April, as boats take their pollock allocations and as seafood processing plants send seasonal workers home. While the springtime uptick in unemployment is not unusual, the April rate is still slightly higher than it was last year. In 2011, only 8.0 percent of people in Unalaska were without work.
Fishermen aren't the only ones gearing up for summer trawling. A group of 18 scientists launch their Bering Sea fish surveys from Unalaska this week.
The stock assessments provide critical information about the health of Alaska’s commercial fisheries. Fisheries regulators use these reports to determine how much of a given species fishermen can safely catch -- and thus how much fish ends up in grocery stores and restaurants across the globe. Pollock, Pacific cod, red king crab, and snow crab are all among the species being surveyed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The researchers will also pay attention to things like sponges and other invertebrates that aren't commercially valued but are important to the health of the ocean ecosystem nonetheless.
Major General Thomas Katkus speaks at the Museum of the Aleutians about Unalaska's role in World War II. (KUCB/Alexandra Gutierrez)
This week marks the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Dutch Harbor, one of just a few attacks on U.S. soil in modern history.
While there were no grand ceremonies to commemorate the bombing, a handful of National Guardsmen traveled out to Unalaska this weekend to pay their respects. KUCB’s Alexandra Gutierrez reports.
About a hundred Unalaska residents braved brisk weather to remember lost fishermen, veterans, and loved ones at Memorial Park on Monday.
The Memorial Day ceremony was a somber one, and it honored those who served in the military and more. Particular attention was given to the service the Coast Guard provides in the Aleutian region. Marine Safety Detachment supervisor Derek Gibson provided a history of the Bering Sea patrol, as flags whipped in the wind.
This week, Unalaska lost one of its most senior elders.
Nicholas Galaktionoff was called an “Unangan treasure” by Aleutian scholars, a great fisherman by his friends, and a good man by his family. He was born in Makushin village in 1925, where his grandmother cared for him. When he was about five years old, he went out on his father’s baidarki for the first time, an experience he would later describe as some of the most fun he ever had. Galaktionoff learned how to fish when he was eight, and caught plenty of halibut and salmon from Unalaska’s waters even in his old age. At age 13, when World War II hit the Aleutian Islands, Galaktionoff was evacuated from Makushin village by the Coast Guard.
