Ketchikan: Gov. Walker visits First City for Chamber event by Leila Kheiry, KRBD - Gov. Bill Walker was in Ketchikan on Saturday to attend the annual Ketchikan Chamber of Commerce awards banquet. Before the event, he sat down with local media for a few minutes to talk about current issues facing the state. - Read this KRBD article... www.krbd.org Photo of the Month PFD: Online filing for the 2017 PFD began at 9:00 am on January 1, 2017 and ends March 31,2017. https://pfd.alaska.gov Ketchikan: Public Meetings Ketchikan: Upcoming Events Historical Ketchikan June Allen Dave Kiffer Louise B. Harrington Ketchikan Weather Ketchikan's Forecast Ketchikan's Historic Weather Nat Weather Service KTN Ketchikan Tides & Currents Search the News Ketchikan Alaska Sitnews RSS widget

Ketchikan: Commerce Committee passes bill to modernize NOAA, includes viable homeport in Ketchikan for Fairweather - Bipartisan legislation introduced last week by U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-AK) unanimously passed the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will facilitates the construction of a viable homeport for the NOAA research vessel Fairweather in Ketchikan.

NOAA Ship Fairweather
Photo courtesy NOAA

“Ketchikan, Alaska is the homeport of the NOAA ship Fairweather, but since 2008, the vessel only passes through from time-to-time due to a dilapidated dock facility,” said Senator Sullivan. The current facility located at 1010 Stedman Street was condemned as unsafe in 2008.

“This legislation requires NOAA to draft a Strategic Plan to develop a viable homeport facility in Ketchikan and also provides new financing tools to allow NOAA to expedite the construction. Doing so will cut down on transit time and save precious resources, allowing the vessel to have a greater impact as it completes its important mission off Alaska’s coast.”

One of the Fairweather’s most important contributions to Alaskan and national policy has been its ability to map waters that are being trafficked more, due to increasing sea ice.

The NOAA Ship Fairweather is a hydrographic survey ship that was originally commissioned with NOAA in 1968. The ship was deactivated in 1989 but a critical backlog of surveys for nautical charts in Alaska was a motivating factor to reactivate the ship in 2004. The Fairweather is named for Mt. Fairweather in southeast Alaska, which is the highest peak in the Fairweather Range.- More...
Tuesday AM - January 31, 2017

Ketchikan - Statewide: Four Alaska Energy, Lands Bills Introduced - Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, both R-Alaska, last week introduced four Alaska-focused bills. The bills would expand the use of clean, renewable hydropower to generate affordable electricity for Alaska communities, reroute a portion of a proposed gasline in Denali National Park and Preserve, and rename an existing wilderness area in Lake Clark National Park and Preserve.

One of the four bills introduced last week authorizes a stay of the hydroelectric license for Mahoney Lake near Ketchikan. This will allow the Southeast Alaska Power Association to consider this renewable project for up to ten additional years. The bill is know as S. 215, Mahoney Lake Hydro Project.

“My top priority as chairman of the Energy Committee is to deliver for Alaska,” Murkowski said of the four bills. “These bills will boost hydropower projects to help provide clean, reliable, and affordable electricity to our communities, provide much needed flexibility to the Alaska gasline project, and honor the legacy of an incredible public servant, former Gov. Jay Hammond. All four of these measures were in the conference report for our broad, bipartisan energy bill last year, and I’m optimistic we will be able to see them signed into law in this new Congress.” - More...
Tuesday AM - January 31, 2017

FISH FACTOR: Alaska halibut catches increase 6.1%, no cuts for 2017 By LAINE WELCH - More Pacific halibut will be going to market this year due to an overall boost in the harvests for the West Coast, British Columbia and Alaska. The coast wide catch of 31.4 million pounds reflects a 5.1 percent increase, and for the first time in decades, not a single fishing region met with a decline in halibut catches.

The heartening news was released on Friday by the International Pacific Halibut Commission, overseer of the stocks since 1923.

Halibut catch limits are determined by summer surveys at more than 1,200 stations from Oregon to the Aleutians. In 2016, the results showed the stock had remained stable over a span of three years, although the fish remained small for their ages.

Alaska always gets the lion’s share of the Pacific halibut catch and a take of 22.62 million pounds this year adds up to an extra million pounds for longliners who hold quota shares of the fish.

The good news has been dampened somewhat by a potential delay to the March 11 start of the fishery due to the bureaucratic freeze by our new president.

On January 20, Donald Trump issued a memo to all federal departments and agencies to freeze new or pending regulations until his administration has time to look them over.

That includes the rules for running the federally-managed Pacific halibut fishery. The Trump memo delays the implementing regulations for 60 days with potential for even longer notices and reviews. That would push the soonest halibut fishery start date to March 27.

Also potentially stalled is the use of pots to catch sablefish, or black cod, in the Gulf of Alaska. That gear was ok’d starting this year by federal advisors to prevent sperm whales from snatching the fish from hooks.

“The National Marine Fisheries Service is working to determine the impacts of the Executive Order on our Alaska Region rule making actions,” said Rachel Baker, fisheries management in Juneau.

Here are the 2017 halibut catch limits for Alaska in millions of pounds, provided by the Halibut Coalition: - More...
Tuesday AM - January 31, 2017

Alaska Science: Sleuthing the site of a century-old earthquake By NED ROZELL - The second-largest earthquake on the planet in 1904 happened somewhere in Alaska. It could have been St. Michael, Rampart, Fairbanks, Coldfoot or a place called Sunrise on the Kenai Peninsula. People felt the magnitude 7.3 at each place.

Fairbanks endures 40 degrees below zero, when the safest place for field scientists is in front of a computer.
Photo by NED ROZELL

If an earthquake happens today, within a few minutes Alaska Earthquake Center researchers post a map with its latitude/longitude (the epicenter) and the depth of the rupture (the hypocenter). Historic earthquakes take a bit more detective work.

These earthquakes are worth knowing about because pinpointed locations tell scientists how busy a certain fault has been and hint at the possibility of future earthquakes.

“It was real marginal,” he said. “You put on all the gear you had to sleep, then got into your 40-below bag. There was still no way to keep warm unless you were moving.”

Boertje says he would never work at those temperatures today, and not just because he’s no longer a graduate student.

“Airplanes don’t work that well and helicopter pilots won’t fly at all,” he said of 40 below temperatures and the ice fog that comes with them.

And the caribou? Boertje said the animals didn’t seem to mind the cold temperatures.

“They had a very similar pattern to summer time. They’d lay down, then get up to graze for about an hour just like they would if it was warm.” - More...
Tuesday AM - January 31, 2017

Ketchikan: Plastic Surgeon to provide local care at PeaceHealth Ketchikan- Plastic Surgeon Cindy Wei, MD, will begin offering regular visiting clinics in Ketchikan in late February. Dr. Wei practices with Seattle Plastic Surgery as well as providing care through Swedish Medical Center.

Dr. Wei attended medical school at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and then completed a comprehensive plastic surgery residency at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. As a resident she took a special interest in cancer reconstruction as well as cosmetic surgery.

Dr. Wei went on to completed two fellowships: one in reconstructive Microsurgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and the second in aesthetic surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

Dr. Wei looks forward to offering patients in southern Southeast Alaska a broad range of plastic surgery services including: cosmetic surgery of the face and body such as breast augmentation, breast lift, tummy tuck, arm/thigh lift, facelift, liposuction and more; skin cancer/Mohs reconstruction; removal of moles, lumps and bumps; scar revision; wound reconstruction; non- surgical cosmetic procedures such as Botox and fillers. - More...
Tuesday AM - January 31, 2017

Columns - Commentary

SUSAN STAMPER BROWN: Leftists' Heads Explode in Response To Keeping America Safe - Given the daily liberal head explosions occurring because of President Trump's immigration policies, one might think Trump demolished the Statue of Liberty, or worse, reintroduced school prayer, when all he did is take executive action on January 27 to protect Americans.

The White House owes no apology for wanting to keep America safe. At most, the administration could consider special circumstances where the threat to the country is negligible, a step they have already committed to doing. The executive order temporarily bans immigration for those coming from jihadi-infested countries like Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Iran and Iraq until better security screening is in place.

The order also puts an indefinite ban on those coming from Syria because ISIS is extremely active there. We didn't hear a peep from leftists when former president Obama did something similar regarding immigration from Iraq in 2011. No one should be surprised, though, given Democrats' standards have nothing to do with safety and security and everything to do with politics and appeasement. - More...
Tuesday AM - January 31, 2017

JOHN MICEK: Trump's Ban a Win for ISIS - During her second debate with Donald Trump, Democrat Hillary Clinton took some serious heat for warning that the Republican's then-proposed ban on Muslims may well have found its way into terrorism recruiting material.

Clinton was right at the time - but she was also prescient.

The new administration's ham-fisted executive order restricting travel from seven, majority-Muslim nations is now being praised by jihadist groups as a victory.

For them.

"[Islamic State leader Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi has the right to come out and inform Trump that banning Muslims from entering America is a 'blessed ban,'" The Washington Post reported Monday, citing a posting to a pro-Islamic State channel on a social media platform called Telegram.

According to The Post, the author compared Trump's executive order issued Friday to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, which Islamic militants hailed at the time as a "blessed invasion." - More...
Tuesday AM - January 31, 2017

RICK JENSEN: Stop Freaking Out About Trump - Take a breath, America.

People are only freaking out because our new president is a Republican.

Today, most Americans agree Ronald Reagan was one of our greatest, most effective presidents.Back in the 1980's, the press ran editorials and quoted "experts" in news stories explaining why Reagan was sure to nuke the world.

Genesis had a hit song and video, "Land of Confusion," expressing and exploiting these same fears.

Instead, Reagan won the cold war and down came the Berlin wall.

Genesis broke up, Phil Collins went on to a financially rewarding solo career and songwriter Mike Rutherford went on to write arguably some of the best songs of his life. (Yeah, even though I disagree with their politics, you can't deny Mike's lyrical and musical brilliance or Phil's technical skills in developing a repetitive build to crescendo.)

America went on to job growth and economic expansion.

On January 20th, the Huffington Post filled their post-inauguration home page with a giant black font that filled the screen, shrieking, "Trump Gets Nuclear Codes!" - More...
Tuesday AM - January 31, 2017