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Saturday
November 30, 2013
Thanksgiving Morning at Bugge's Beach
Front Page Photograph By BILL TUCKER ©2013
(Please respect the rights of photographers, never republish or copy
without permission and/or payment of required fees.)
Fish Factor: International Pacific Halibut Commission Meeting In Seattle By LAINE WELCH - Will Alaska’s halibut catches be cut again next year?
That’s the big question as the industry braces for the International Pacific Halibut Commission’s interim meeting this week in Seattle.
By all accounts, there appear to be lots of halibut in Alaska waters, but their unusually slow growth rates have forced a downward press on catches for nearly a decade. The Alaska catch total this year was about 22 million pounds.
Also up for review – 22 fishermen from remote communities in the mid-Aleutians (4A) are requesting an increase in their halibut catch to about half a million pounds. From the same region is a proposal to allow retention of halibut taken as bycatch in sablefish pot gear. Another proposal asks for mandatory length requirements for all halibut caught by sport charters.
A report by the Halibut Bycatch Work Group, formed in 2011, that covers rates for every Alaska gear group and region also is up for discussion.
The IPHC meets Dec. 4-5 at its offices in Seattle.
Stocks hold steady
The 2014 catches for Alaska’s largest fisheries also will be decided in December, and based on summer trawl surveys, the Bering Sea appear to be holding steady.
“Based on the summer surveys, most of them were a slight uptick or a slight downtick. So we are not expecting major changes,” said Jane DiCosimo, Senior Plan Coordinator with the North Pacific Fishery Management Council in Anchorage.
That’s likely to mean an Alaska pollock catch of close to three billion pounds and a half billion pounds of Pacific cod.
Setting TACs, or Total Allowable Catches, requires going through a months-long process of federal advisory and public comment postings. For Alaska fish scientists, it means crunching biomasses, catches and dozens of data sets that are gathered into November. DiCosimo, who is a veteran of the mid-Atlantic council process, called the North Pacific’s ability to ‘crank out’ sound quotas ‘unique in the nation.’
“It’s a complicated, but it’s designed to be able to use the summer survey information and the catch data practically up until the stock assessment is run. And that is unusual for the country,” she said. “I think we are in a unique and lucky situation where we have such (staff) resources devoted to being able to fish on the most current biomass data.”
Also unique is the number of stock assessment surveys done in Alaska – for 23 separate species in both the Bering Sea/Aleutians and the Gulf.
“We have an on year, off year cycle for the Gulf of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, and we have an annual cycle for the trawl surveys for the eastern Bering Sea,” DiCosimo explained.
More than 80 percent of Alaska’s seafood landings come from federal waters (3-200 miles), and Alaska provides over half of the nation’s wild caught seafood. The NPFMC meets Dec. 9-17 at the Anchorage Hilton.
Senate fish savvy
Alaska’s two US Senators make a great tag team when it comes to watching out for our fishing industry.
Last week the federal government officially declared in a letter to Senator Murkowski that “American managed fisheries do not require third-party certification to demonstrate responsible and sustainable practices.”
That put to rest the blowback caused by the government’s practice of ignoring its own rules, and instead leaving it to private, Outside groups to decide if Alaska’s fisheries are well managed. - More...
Saturday PM - November 30, 2013
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Alaska Science: Biologist creates legacy at village goose camp By NED ROZELL - When Craig Ely thumbed through his collection of photos of Alaska Native kids and biologists gathered in front of an old church, he knew he had to make a yearbook. Not for himself, though he would savor the memories, but for all the kids who had helped him do science since the 1980s.
Kids from the village of Chevak who were part of a bird-banding crew at Old Chevak in August 1988. This photo is a part of a yearbook compiled by biologist Craig Ely, who orchestrated the camp for 25 years.
Photo by C. Ely
The U.S. Geological Survey biologist has executed on that project, working with talented colleagues to create a book with pictures of dozens of smiling teenagers from the small western Alaska village of Chevak. The children helped biologists gather and band geese and swans each August from 1986 to 2010.
The lovely volume shows a rare long-term collaboration between villagers and scientists who were there to look at the problem of declining numbers of geese returning to the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in the 1970s and 1980s.
Banding Together to Learn and Preserve is the effort of Ely, who studies large waterfowl out of Anchorage, where you can find him in winter. In summer for the past few decades he was wearing rubber boots in tabletop lake-and-slough country of southwest Alaska.
The book features a quarter century of kids aged 13 and older from the small Cu’pik-speaking village of Chevak. The children each spent a few days at the abandoned village site of Old Chevak helping Ely and other biologists round up flightless birds so the researchers could band them. The scientists wanted to see where the geese and swans went during the times they weren’t in Alaska, to mark them to see if they stuck around the site when they were here, and to count how many babies they produced. - More...
Saturday PM - November 30, 2013 |
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Science: Dinosaur shook tail feathers for mating show; Canadian discovery offers best evidence yet that dinosaurs used feathers for courtship By BRIAN MURPHY - Amazingly that turkey you ate for Thanksgiving and dinosaurs have something in common. A University of Alberta researcher’s examination of fossilized dinosaur tail bones has led to a breakthrough finding in 2013: some feathered dinosaurs used tail plumage to attract mates, much like modern-day peacocks and turkeys.
Artist's conception of the feathered dinosaur Similicaudipteryx using its tail feathers in a mating display.
Illustration By Sydney Mohr
University of Alberta paleontology researcher Scott Persons followed a chain of fossil evidence that started with a peculiar fusing together of vertebrae at the tip of the tail of four different species of dinosaurs, some separated in time and evolution by 45 million years.
Persons says the final vertebrae in the tails of a group of dinosaurs called oviraptors were fused together, forming a ridged, blade-like structure. “The structure is called a pygostyle” says Persons. “Among modern animals, only birds have them.” - More...
Saturday PM - November 30, 2013
Columns - Commentary
 JEFF LUND: Success… but not for me - During my two months home this summer, I had no obligations other than to chop firewood so I was able to fish almost every day. I had teaching colleagues from California visiting in June and July, so when we weren’t capsizing canoes in the river or climbing mountains, I’d pull a Tom Sawyer and trick them into thinking chopping wood is fun, and that they should do it.
That was my summer. Fish, and misrepresent life just enough to get my buddies to do my work. My context has completely changed. There are no Lower 48ers around to manipulate into doing my chores, and every conversation around town involves deer, not fish.
I have been picking up tips while hunting the rut after I got my rifle dialed in earlier this month. I’m starting to get a grasp on this hunting thing though the trips haven’t all been successful if the measure for success is bringing back a buck. However it is completely possible to have a great trip that doesn’t end in blood. - More...
Saturday PM - November 30, 2013 |
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 Rain Gauge Clarifications By Steve Corporon -
The following clarifications and additional facts are provided in response to the article in Sitnews titled "11 Things You Might Not Know About the Proposed New Rain Gauge".
Clarification No. 1: Funding for this project along with the description and justification for the project were in the 2013 Port budget as follows (word for word): "The current rain gauge sign on the Port is a one-sided sign mounted to the vent stack for the wastewater lift station located under Berth II. The vent stack abuts the current KVB Building; therefore, the back of the sign is not visible. The building will be removed in the fall of 2012 and a new KVB Building will be constructed approximately 30 feet away. The proposed replacement rain gauge sign will be a commissioned piece of public art that will surround the vent stack covering it on all sides. The Ketchikan Area Arts and Humanities Council would assist in soliciting the call to artists and selection of the artist and piece for a 7% administrative fee. Funding would be from the Port Enterprise Fund but would be restricted to receipts from non-maritime related revenue such as rent monies from tour and food vendor leases." - More...
Saturday PM - November 30, 2013
Dock Bong By A. M. Johnson - To the "unwashed" who are offering disparaging remarks towards the efforts of rejuvenating the crude, weathered, simple rain gauge that has survived many years of weather torture. It is "Free Money", as such let us not "Bully" the Arts and Craft community with negativity. - More...
Saturday PM - November 30, 2013
One-sided Report On Timber Transition By Eric Muench -
The October 28 Sitnews article suggesting a quick and complete Forest Service transition to second growth timber harvest is misleading. The Geos Institute and Mater Ltd. report shows a lack of basic knowledge or concern about forest industry economics. - More...
Saturday PM - November 30, 2013
OPEN LETTER: FREE ENTERPRISE By David G. Hanger - As U.S. politicians and elected officials, I assume that all of you have had numerous opportunities to stand before large groups of individuals, business people and individual constituents both, and have extolled in elaborate detail the virtues of capitalism and free enterprise. Indeed, it would surprise me considerably if each of you has not repeatedly extolled the virtues of capitalism and free enterprise. The question of the moment, therefore, is why do your constituents, good U.S. citizens all, get so little of it; in fact are being terribly victimized by the crudest of monopolists this very moment? - More...
Saturday PM - November 30, 2013
Thanksgiving For Living in The Land of Opportunity By Dan Ortiz -
A day has passed since our national observance of Thanksgiving. I write this letter with heartfelt gratitude for the fact that my 55 years on this earth have been spent as a citizen of the United States and that the last 45 have been spent as a resident of Ketchikan and southern Southeast Alaska. I, like the majority in this country, have been blessed by abundant freedom and opportunity. Much of that opportunity originates from our founding fathers, who believed in the simple, but revolutionary concept of "government by the people for the people.” I still believe in that concept today. Ketchikan has been a wonderful place for me to grow up and a wonderful place for my wife Lori and I to raise our children. There is a very real sense of community in Ketchikan that is becoming more rare in our country as time progresses. Anyone who has experienced dealing with a family member’s major illness in Ketchikan can attest to the outpouring of love and support from people of all religious, social, economic and political backgrounds. - More..
Saturday PM - November 30, 2013
Al's Candidacy By Rod Landis -
Go for it, Al! - More...
Saturday - November 30, 2013
Medicaid expansion By John Suter -
The governor is not willing to go forward with the Medicaid expansion because it is not the program that he wants. We all know that the governor has done all that can be done to get the oil companies as much money as possible. - More...
Saturday PM - November 30, 2013
OUR COUNTRY! By Glen E Terrell -
This is OUR COUNTRY! We don’t have to accept the trash coming out of Washington DC that’s being presented to us as “the fruit of the government of the greatest nation on Earth.” The president’s approval rating is 37% and that of Congress is about 9%. Collectively those we have elected to govern us are unfit to do so. It’s time for “change that really matters.” - More...
Saturday PM - November 30, 2013
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