Alaska: Concerned For Their Future, GOA Trawl Fishermen Cease Fishing To Deliver Message - A majority of Gulf of Alaska groundfish trawlers will voluntarily suspend fishing in order to attend the North Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting in Portland, Oregon this week. They are concerned that the recent State of Alaska proposal to restructure their fisheries would seriously harm their livelihoods and the economies of their fishery dependent communities.

Instead of harvesting fish and pursuing their livelihood, many of the vessel owners, skippers and crew that deliver into Kodiak, Sand Point and King Cove will travel over 3,000 miles round-trip to express their concerns to decision makers at a fisheries management meeting in Portland, Oregon.

“This is really quite unique,” said Julie Bonney, Executive Director of the Alaska Groundfish Data Bank based in Kodiak, Alaska. “Fishermen agreeing to stand down, essentially losing income, in order to make this trip to provide their input demonstrates just how important this change in management is to the fishing industry.”

All of these vessels compete with each other, and the fact that there has been a consensus among these competitive fishermen to stop fishing and go to the meeting underscores the urgency they feel.

“The state really upset the apple cart by proposing a completely different approach to manage these fisheries and it was pretty late in the game,” said Heather Mann, Director of the Midwater Trawlers Cooperative. “The meeting in Portland is the first opportunity for harvesters and processors directly impacted by any new management program to provide their valuable input on the state’s recent proposal,” continued Mann, “as the new alternative was added late in the October 2015 Council meeting with little opportunity for public comment until now.”

“Fishermen prefer to be on the water,” said Kiley Thompson from Sand Point, Alaska and president of Peninsula Fishermen’s Coalition, “plying their trade and harvesting fish, not traveling thousands of miles to stand in front of a large group of decision makers and other stakeholders to provide public testimony.” Bob Krueger, president of Alaska Whitefish Trawlers Association, continues, “This change in management is so very important to the livelihoods of industry participants and the Gulf of Alaska communities they support that they are suspending their business activities (without pay) and traveling on their own dime in order to provide their input. This really says something about the dedication of these fishermen and their willingness to do what they feel is necessary to engage in the process.” - More...
Monday AM - February 01, 2016

Alaska: Keeping Data Private - Taking that Facebook quiz to find out one’s spirit animal might seem like harmless fun, but one wrong click could put a person’s online data at risk. To help combat security threats Better Business Bureau participated in Data Privacy Day 2016. This year’s theme was “Respecting Privacy, Safeguarding Data and Enabling Trust.” The day is recognized annually to promote awareness on the importance of online privacy and protecting your personal information.

According to a survey conducted by the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) and Zogby International only 26 percent of Americans felt “their home computer was safe from viruses” while a mere 21 percent felt safe from hackers. - More...
Monday AM - February 01, 2016

Columns - Commentary

DAVE KIFFER: Not Much Rockin and Rollin Round Here - I was on the Internet a few days ago when Los Anchorage got shaken and stirred by a fair size earthquake. It was one of those virtual moments where one of my up north Facebook friends suddenly announced. "Wow, that was a big one." Then others quickly chimed in their reports of shaking and things falling off the walls.

Experiencing it online was better than actually being there.

Really, it was.

Turned out the temblor was one of the biggest ones to hit that area in a couple of decades.

Of course, down in here in Our Fair Salmon City we felt nothing.

That's no surprise. The last time these here parts had a quake of significant size to REALLY shake things was ........ well, pretty much never.

Okay, you say, we're on the coast, we must get tsunamis right? After all, everywhere you look you see those nifty blue Tsunami Evacuation signs, right? Well, the last time this little slice of God's Country had a tsunami of any size was ...... well, also pretty much never.

Okay, I am not saying we have never ever had a major earthquake or a tsunami in the Ketchikan area. But as far as I can tell, the last one was probably in the Mesozoic era.

(yes, yes, I am sure there is a geologist or two out there who will tell me that there have been earthquakes and tidal waves here more recently. But no one seems to remember them. And now that I am getting older (senior tax exemption here I come!), I can say "not in my lifetime" with the certainty that that has actually been a relatively long period of time, if not geologically speaking. The only contemporary events that can actually be measured in geologic time are committee meetings and youth soccer practices).

There was a big quake on the BC coast a few years ago. The tsunami that roared through the Ketchikan harbor was measured at six inches. There was a decent size quake out by Craig a couple of years ago. My house creaked a wee bit. We just don't - knock on wood - get those type of "events" here.

And I would recognize one if I felt it. I was on an upper floor of a hotel in Anchorage a decade ago when one rattled my teeth. And I was on a much, much, much higher floor in a Los Angeles skyscraper many years ago when one rattled a lot more than my teeth. Talk about a feeling of terror, the building is swaying back and forth like a drunk palm tree and you have nowhere to go but down. Way down.

But back to Ketchikan. We were inundated by a tsunami of Internet concern over our well-being after this most recent quake made national news. - More...
Monday AM - February 01, 2016