With its lengthy stretches of coast line, rapid currents, and big waves, Alaska could be capable of producing about a fifth of the nation’s electricity. That’s according to two new reports released by the United States Department of Energy that find that the state’s waters have enough energy in them to produce over 850 terawatt hours of electricity every year -- that’s enough to run over 800 billion space heaters all day, year round.

Scientists made progress last week on a model that will help estimate the population of Aleutian Islands golden king crab.

When it’s finished, the model will let fisheries managers decide each year how much crab can be harvested sustainably.  That could translate into millions of dollars of additional revenue or cuts for the fishery, depending on what the model shows.

Right now, the State Board of Fisheries sets the golden king crab harvest in regulation, as opposed to annually.  It's hovered around 6 million pounds for the last decade.

It turns out freezing spray isn’t just dangerous for cars and crabbers, it’s a hazard for birds as well.

A storm sweeping through Unalaska Tuesday coated everything in thick ice - including many birds.

“The eagles, when they do take off, and they’ve got this frozen layer on their wings, you can hear the ice cracking as they’re attempting to fly, but the weight is quite a bit.”

Blizzard conditions and a travel advisory have shut down most city offices today. 

National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Lawson says a large low-pressure system to the southwest is creating the stormy conditions. 

"The front that's associated with that is pushing a lot of wind and snow up into your area and that going to continue to progress just to your south over the next day or so."

The 20th annual Unalaska Christmas Bird Count actually took place on New Year’s Day this year.  

For those you alert enough to remember, it was a cold, snowy day, but 23 local birders put on their winter boots and divided into 10 teams to go hunt some birds.  Not literally of course.  In fact, count organizer Suzi Golodoff says the tradition started as a protest of hunting.

“The bird count started 112 years ago, in 1900, around Christmas time, I think on Christmas Day.  Some early conservationist and birders on the East Coast got the idea to kind of do a census or count birds, sort of as a protest to the tradition of the day, which was to go out and shoot everything you could on Christmas and see what you could get.”

Scientists have downgraded the aviation alert level for Cleveland Volcano from orange to yellow.  

The volcano lies on a major international flight path and on December 29, it put up a 15,000 foot ash cloud.  That prompted the Alaska Volcano Observatory to increase the warning level, even though the plume wasn’t expected to interfere with aviation.

Scientist-in-charge John Power says they’ve lowered the alert because the ash cloud has dissipated.  He says they still don’t know exactly what happened to the lava dome that’s been forming in the crater since early July.

Fox trapping is commonplace and legal in Unalaska, but recently it’s been causing a bit of a stir. 

In the last month State Wildlife Troopers have responded to three separate incidences of foxes dragging traps through the Valley.  Trooper Jason Ball says it’s probably the result of someone improperly staking their traps.

“I would suspect that it’s someone fairly new to it, someone inexperienced.”

It’s the season for steaming hot bowls of clam chowder and oysters on the half-shell with champagne.  But if you harvested those shellfish yourself in the Aleutians, be aware they might contain high levels of the shellfish toxin PSP.

While PSP outbreaks mostly happen during the summer, Aleutian Pribilof Island Community Development Association biologist Bruce Wright says in recent years wintertime outbreaks have been detected in the Aleutians as well. Wright and another scientist were doing year-round monitoring of PSP through an Environmental Protection Agency grant for the last two years, but that funding ran out in October. 

How to manage Steller sea lions is a controversial topic.  The State of Alaska recently sued the National Marine Fisheries Service over its decision to close fisheries in parts of the Aleutian chain in order to protect the endangered western stock.  That case will be heard in court on December 21. 

NFMS says the population out west is declining because the sea lions have to compete with commercial fisheries for food.  The State says there isn’t enough data to back that theory up.