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Friday
December 06, 2013
Ketchikan
Ketchikan as photographed from Cape Fox...
Front Page Photograph By MIKE SMITH ©2013
(Please respect the rights of photographers, never republish or copy
without permission and/or payment of required fees.)
Alaska: Governor Proposes Fixing
Alaska's $11.9 Billion Unfunded Pension Liability - A plan to put the state’s operating budget on a more sustainable path, while better enabling the state to meet its retirement obligations for earlier retirement system plans was proposed by Governor Sean Parnell this week.
Current projections estimate that Alaska's Public Employees’ Retirement System (PERS) and Teachers’ Retirement System (TRS) have a combined unfunded liability of $11.9 billion.
Specifically, in his FY 2015 budget, the Governor Parnell will recommend transferring $3 billion from a budget savings account into the state’s retirement trust funds. According to the governor, this move would effectively pay down the unfunded pension debt and create a lower fixed annual payment from the state operating budget.
“State pension contributions represent the single largest cost driver in the state’s operating budget,” Governor Parnell said. “This year’s budget contains an unfunded pension liability contribution of more than $600 million, and the payment plan requires an increase to more than $700 million next year. Soon, the operating budget would be required to contribute more than $1 billion annually to this one line-item. If left unaddressed, the annual state pension contribution will increasingly burden the state and hamper our ability to meet the people’s constitutional priorities. Paying down the debt now is this generation’s responsibility that we will not leave to the children of Alaska to deal with in the future.” - More...
Friday PM - December 06, 2013
Fish Factor: Halibut catch limits down again for all regions except Southeast Alaska By LAINE WELCH - It comes as no surprise that the recommendations for next year’s halibut catches are down again for all regions except Southeast Alaska.
Fishery scientists with the International Pacific Halibut Commission have recommended a 2014 coast wide commercial catch total of 24.45 million pounds, a 21% decrease from the 31 million pounds allowed for this year. That includes catches in Alaska, British Columbia and the Pacific Coast states.
In a summation at a meeting in Seattle last week, the IPHC said: “The results of the 2013 stock assessment indicate that the Pacific halibut stock has been declining continuously over much of the last decade as a result of decreasing size-at-age, as well as recruitment strengths that are much smaller than those observed through the 1980s and 1990s.”
Here are the proposed catch limits for Alaska regions in millions of pounds, compared to the totals from 2013 in parentheses:
Southeast Alaska (2C) - 4.16 (2.97); Central Gulf (3A) - 9.43 (11.03); Western Gulf (3B) – 2.84 (4.29); Alaska Peninsula (4A) – 0.85 (1.33); Aleutian Islands region (4B) - 0.82 (1.45); Bering Sea (4CDE) 0.64 (1.94).
Final decisions on the catch limits, season start date and regulation changes will be made by the IPHC at its annual meeting, Jan. 13-17 in Seattle.
While the Pacific halibut catches have been declining for decade, the value of the fishery has been on a downward trend for the past four years.
Near the end of each year bills are sent out to Alaska longliners who hold shares of the halibut and sablefish (black cod) catches. They are required to pay an annual fee to the federal government to cover the costs for managing and enforcing those fisheries. The fee, which is capped at three percent, is based on dock prices and averaged across the state.
The billings were mailed out in late November to 2,024 fishermen, 90 fewer than last year, according to Troie Zuniga, fee coordinator for NOAA Fisheries in Juneau.
This year the combined halibut and sablefish fisheries paid a fee of 2.8%, which yielded $5 million for coverage costs.
For halibut, the overall dockside value of the 2013 fishery was $105 million, and about $72 million for black cod. - More...
Friday PM - December 06, 2013
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Alaska Science: Grinding fish heads for the goodness within By NED ROZELL - In a chilly building across Cook Inlet from the white pyramid of Mount Redoubt rest a few dozen plastic-lined cardboard totes filled to the brim with an amber liquid. Each chest-high cube holds about a ton of fish oil extracted this summer from the heads of salmon. It’s a product that would have been lost to the Kenai River if Pat Simpson had not recovered it.
Pat Simpson of Anchorage holds up sockeye salmon oil he extracted from fishheads processed at his Nikiski plant.
Photo by Ned Rozell
Simpson, 49, is a fisherman-turned-entrepreneur who has for the past few summers purchased salmon heads from fish processors who do business here in this small industrial town north of the Kenai River. Using precision equipment made in Europe, Simpson’s team steams and grinds the heads of pink, chum and red salmon to render a product now available in box stores as 90-count bottles of “Wild Alaskan Salmon Oil” gel tablets.
“We sold all our fish oil the first three years (to companies that put it in capsules and sold it to large retailers),” Simpson said at his Nikiski plant, shut down and unheated for the offseason.
Simpson’s venture with his company Alaska Marine Nutrition is part of a dream to enable fish processors in remote places to use the oiliest part of a salmon — its head — a portion of the fish prized in other cultures but often returned to the ocean in Alaska fisheries.
Simpson first sensed an opportunity to extract and sell fish oil when he was a boy growing up in Cordova. There, as in many rural Alaska places where commercial fishermen catch salmon, processors kept the high-value filets but ground up the carcasses and released the slurry back into the ocean. - More...
Friday PM - December 06, 2013 |
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Alaska: Avian Cholera Confirmed As Cause of Die-off of Seabirds - An unusual number of sick and dead seabirds around St. Lawrence Island is caused by Avian Cholera, a bacterial infection relatively common in waterfowl other places, but previously undetected in Alaska.
The highly contagious bacterium, Pasteurella multocida, has caused many large die-offs of wild waterfowl worldwide and causes one of the most common diseases of domestic poultry. The closest avian cholera events to Alaska in the past decade involved common eiders and snow geese in Nunavut and Northwest Territories, Canada. It is not related to the infection in people referred to as ‘cholera.’
Dr. Kimberlee Beckmen, Wildlife Veterinarian and Wildlife Disease Specialist says that the speedy detection of the disease was a result of two factors. Citizens of Gambell and Savoonga quickly reported seeing sick and dead birds beginning November 20th. The University of Alaska’s Marine Advisory Program Biologist Gay Sheffield who is stationed in Nome received a dead thick-billed murre, a Northern fulmar and a crested auklet and sent them to the U.S. Geological Service National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, WI. The diagnosis was made on December 4.
Dr. Beckmen said that before the diagnosis was confirmed, local residents had shared concerns about possible causes relating to the environmental, and were worried that humans might be susceptible. - More...
Friday PM - December 06, 2013
Columns - Commentary
 JEFF LUND: Time: Faster than a speeding bullet - When it finally happened, it happened quickly.
We hiked up a steep stretch which separated spongy muskeg from the last line of timber before the mountain top. I had shot a buck in that general vicinity but that was a good chunk of time a foot of snow and 40-degrees ago.
As Don and I stood in the white world of the alpine winter I lost my focus on glassing for life and instead breathed in the surprisingly calm moment. Just as the wind picked up we decided to head down and spend our time in the muskeg between us and the logging road where we parked. We made our way back to the truck without so much as a sighting.
Plan A had failed. There wasn’t really a plan B, but it was better than sitting at home. We drove off the mountain and started road hunting until Don saw a spur that evoked the memory of a 3x3 his son shot. It had been years since he’d been up it, but it was worth a try.
That’s when things sped up. Anyone who has spied a buck through a scope after hours of quiet searching (and a second thermos of coffee) knows how fractions of seconds lengthen in those moments.
“There’s a buck” Don whisper-yelled. - More...
Friday PM - December 06, 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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