Ketchikan: The Southeast Board of Fisheries meeting scheduled to be held in Ketchikan at the Ted Ferry Ciivic Center starting on January 04, 2022 has been postponed due to COVID. For more information about the meeting, updates and detailed information click here. PSA by SitNews. Board of Fisheries Meeting Update: Alaska Board of Fisheries Rescheduled Southeast and Yakutat Shellfish and Finfish Meeting, March 10-22, 2022 in Anchorage; Hatchery Committee meeting to follow, March 23, 2022. (PDF) Ketchikan: Board of Fish Southeast meeting moved to Anchorage in March - Posted by Joe Viechnicki... www.kfsk.org Ketchikan: Public Meetings Ketchikan: Upcoming Events Ketchikan: Announcements Ketchikan: Classifieds CLASSIFIEDS Publish Your Ad Click Here Historical Ketchikan June Allen Dave Kiffer Louise B. Harrington Ketchikan Weather Ketchikan's Forecast Ketchikan Dec. Weather Ketchikan 2021 Daily & Monthly Data (Choose the Location of Interest) Nat Weather Service KTN Ketchikan Tides & Currents Tideschart Sunrise - Sunset Ketchikan Search the News Ketchikan Alaska U.S. Congress 2020-2021: Bills passed one chamber U.S. Congress 2020-2021: Bills that have passed the House & Senate and become Law U.S. Congress 2020-2021: Bills Introduced

Ketchikan Historical: When "54-40 or Fight" Was the Presidential Cry By DAVE KIFFER - In the 1844 United States Presidential election, all eyes were towards Southeast Alaska.

Well, not really Southeast Alaska. The eyes were toward the boundary of Russian America and the "Oregon Territory."

And, actually, most of the eyes were on Texas, but the election slogan of Democratic candidate James Polk of Tennessee was “54-40 or fight.” Which, as all cartographers know, is the latitude that runs roughly through the center of Dixon Entrance.

Confused?

It all goes back to “Manifest Destiny.”

In 1844, the idea that America should expand to “from sea to shining sea” was a popular one in the half-century-old republic. Those in the South favored the annexation of Texas, which had been “independent” from Mexico since 1836. Southerners saw the annexation as a way to add political power to the pro-slavery side in the debate that was fracturing America into north and south.

That annexation would eventually bring the US into conflict with Mexico and allow further American expansion into the Southwest by the end of the decade.

In order to counter “expansion” in the South, Northerners favored resolving the long running dispute between the United States and Great Britain over the “Oregon Territories” and then creating “states” in that region that would be non-slave states

The north Pacific coasts of what are now Washington, Oregon and British Columbia had always been in contention. At one point, they were claimed by Russia, Great Britain, the United States and Spain. Even the French had their eye on the area at one point.

After the War of 1812, control of the Oregon “territories” was shared, suspiciously, by the United States and Great Britain. The only thing the two sides generally agreed on was that the territory south of the Columbia River belonged to the United States and the territory north of Puget Sound belonged to the British. British Territory ended where Russian America began, at 54 degrees, 40 minutes north latitude, as established in the Russo-British treaty of 1825.

At to the territory in the middle, which was what is now much of Washington state, the relationship would remain “complicated” until the mid-1840s.

Between the 1810s and the 1840s, as Americans poured into the Oregon Territory, there were numerous disputes which led the British to suggest they should control the territory all the way down to the Spanish border in Northern California and also led the Americans to suggest they should control “Oregon” all the way north to the Russian border at 54’ 40.”

Polk’s opponent in the 1844 election was Henry Clay of the Whig Party.

The Whigs had partially risen from the defunct Federalist party earlier in the century, but were also a conglomeration of several smaller parties. As a result, Whig policies were often crafted to meet a variety of interests.

The Whigs were not opposed to manifest destiny, but they were not strongly in favor of it either. - More...
Wednesday PM - January 12, 2022

Alaska: State forestry offering virtual wildland firefighting class in February - Alaskans looking to start a career in wildland firefighting don’t have to wait until spring to take a class that will qualify them to work this summer.

The Alaska Division of Forestry is piloting a new basic wildland firefighting (Red Card) class to be held Feb. 14-25. The course will be offered statewide through the online Navigate platform and features both virtual and in-person components. Students need access to a computer with a webcam and microphone, as well as high-speed internet.

The registration deadline for the class is Feb. 8, 2022. Students can register online. Cost is $55 with purchase of an e-book or $73 for a paperback book. Students may apply for financial assistance if they cannot afford the class. 

The class includes an in-person field day at a local Area office later this spring. Students can schedule a date and location for their field day and fitness test when they register. Students must participate in the field day and pass a fitness test to complete the class. Upon completion of the class, field day and fitness test, students will be eligible to receive a Red Card to work on a crew or in other wildland firefighting support positions. 

The virtual component of the class will take approximately 30 hours with a daily time commitment of 2-3 hours for self-study. The class will feature daily Zoom meetings, quizzes and a final exam that students must achieve a minimum score of 70 percent. Instructors will be available via email or phone to answer questions as they come up. - More...
Wednesday PM - January 12, 2022

Fish Factor: A lot of fishing going on; Halibut watch; Covid cans Ketchikan; &  Good global outlook By LAINE WELCH - Wow, there is a lot of fishing going on across Alaska!

Salmon is the heart of Alaska’s seafood industry but winter is when the fishing action really begins. 

Hundreds of boats are out on the water on the first day of each new year, beginning a predictable rhythm for the seafood industry as millions of pounds of fish begin to cross the docks around the clock at Alaska’s working waterfronts. Here’s a sampler:

Starting January 1 boats drop pots and baited lines for cod, rockfish and other whitefish in the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea. 

Alaska pollock, the nation’s largest food fishery, opens to trawl fishing on January 20. 

A Tanner crab fishery opens on January 15 at Kodiak, Chignik and the South Peninsula with a combined catch of 1.8 million pounds.  

Tanner crab and golden king crab fisheries open in Southeast Alaska on February 11. A Tanner crab fishery also opens in Prince William Sound on March 1.

Bering Sea crabbers are fishing for Tanners and golden king crab and will start dropping pots for snow crab this month.   

Southeast divers are wrapping up a nearly 1.9 million pound sea cucumber harvest; divers also are still digging up giant geoduck clams in some regions. 

Trollers are pulling up Chinook salmon in a fishery that will close on March 15. They’ve taken 6,219 winter kings so far, each valued at $122.43.

Halibut watch:

Pacific halibut catches for 2022 will be announced at the annual International Pacific Halibut Commission meeting  held online January 24-28, and fishermen are hoping for another year of increased catches when the fishery opens in early March. 

Last year’s coastwide catch limit was 39 million pounds for fisheries spanning from California and British Columbia to the far reaches of the Bering Sea. 

Alaska always gets the lion’s share and in 2021fishermen holding shares of the catch took 93% of their 18.5 million pound limit by the time the fishery closed on December 7, one month longer than usual. Homer, Seward, Kodiak and Juneau and Sitka were top ports for halibut landings.

The average price paid to Alaska fishermen for halibut in 2021 was $6.40/lb bringing the fishery value to $109,129,240, according to NOAA data. That compares to a 2020 dock price of $4.12/lb and a fishery value of $61,778,449.

Covid cans Ketchikan: 

The Covid pandemic has derailed the AK Board of Fisheries meeting  that planned to meet in-person from Jan.4-15 in Ketchikan. 

The Board oversees management of Alaska commercial, sport, subsistence and personal use fisheries in state waters out to three miles.

The meeting, set to address 157 Southeast and Yakutat fishery issues, has been “postponed to a future date and location to be determined” according to Doug Vincent-Lang, Alaska Department of Fish and Game Commissioner in a press release.

“Cases in Southeast are increasing in almost every community. With the rise in cases post the holiday season, already key staff have contracted COVID-19 and are unable to participate. In addition, the nation and Alaska are facing serious transportation difficulties as weather and the pandemic are seriously hampering travel in the near-term,” Glenn Haight, BOF Executive Director said in the announcement.

Adding to the challenge is the resignation of newest BOF member, Indy Walton of Soldotna, who Gov. Dunleavy appointed last September. Walton named “medical issues and his busy business schedule as considerations in his decision.” 

Walton was named to the BOF by Gov. Dunleavy nearly three months beyond a legal deadline, and he was not yet approved by the Alaska legislature. He has fished for salmon commercially for nearly 40 years at Kodiak and Bristol Bay and also owns a fishing lodge on the Kvichak River.  

Nominations for Walton’s seat will be accepted until Dunleavy names his appointment, said deputy director of communications, Jeff Turner. The appointee must then be approved by the Alaska Legislature. - More...
Wednesday PM - January 12, 2022

New research on magnetite in salmon noses illuminates understanding of sensory mechanisms enabling magnetic perception across life
By MICHELLE KLAMPE
Photo courtesy OSU's Hatfield Marine Science Center

Alaska: New research on magnetite in salmon noses illuminates understanding of sensory mechanisms enabling magnetic perception across life By MICHELLE KLAMPE - It’s widely understood that animals such as salmon, butterflies and birds have an innate magnetic sense, allowing them to use the Earth’s magnetic field for navigation to places such as feeding and breeding grounds.

But scientists have struggled to determine exactly how the underlying sensory mechanism for magnetic perception actually works.

In a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international team of researchers, including scientists from Oregon State University, outlines a new theory. Magnetite crystals that form inside specialized receptor cells of salmon and other animals may have roots in ancient genetic systems that were developed by bacteria and passed to animals long ago through evolutionary genetics.

The theory is based on new evidence from nanoscopic magnetic material found within cells in the noses of salmon. The paper’s lead author is Renee Bellinger, who began the research as a doctoral student at Oregon State, completing her Ph.D. in fisheries science in 2014.

“The cells that contain magnetic material are very scarce,” said Bellinger, who now works as a research geneticist at the U.S. Geological Survey and is affiliated with the University of Hawaii, Hilo. “We weren’t able to definitively prove magnetite as the underlying key to magnetic perception in animals, but our study revealed associated genes as an important tool to find new evidence of how potential magnetic sensors may function.”

“Finding magnetic receptors is like trying to find a needle in haystack. This work paves the way to make the ‘needle’ glow really bright so we can find and understand receptor cells more easily,” Bellinger said.

The findings have the potential for widespread application, from improving salmon management through better understanding of how they use the ocean to targeted medical treatments based on magnetism, said coauthor Michael Banks, a fisheries genomics, conservation and behavior professor at Oregon State.

“Salmon live a hard and fast life, going out to the ocean to specific areas to feed and then coming back to their original spawning grounds where they die. They don’t have the opportunity to teach their offspring where to go, yet the offspring still somehow know where to go,” Banks said. “If we can figure out the way animals such as salmon sense and orient, there’s a lot of potential applications for helping to preserve the species, but also for human applications such as medicine or other orientation technology.” - More...
Wednesday PM - January 12, 2022

Southeast Alaska: SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium Announces Crossings Closure in Wrangell  - Health care systems throughout the United States have been dramatically impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium (SEARHC) has not been immune. SEARHC’s adolescent residential treatment programs have been especially impacted, experiencing a significant decrease in patient volume, serious staffing pressures, drastically rising costs, and infrastructure challenges requiring substantial future capital investment. These realities have forced SEARHC to re-examine how residential services are delivered and how we can continue to provide high quality care.

After a considerable discernment process, SEARHC said they made the extremely difficult decision to permanently close Crossings in Wrangell as of January 12, 2022 and unify adolescent residential services into the current, recently expanded Raven’s Way program based in Sitka. SEARHC said this move to consolidate and optimize resources ensures they will continue a sustainable adolescent program centered on evidenced based substance abuse treatment, wilderness experiences, classroom learning, and Native cultural activities for years to come. The Crossings 2021 season recently ended so the closure will have no impact on direct patient care.  - More...
Wednesday PM - January 12, 2022   

Lawsuit Aims to Protect Pacific Humpbacks From Deadly Fishing Gear; West Coast Pot Fishery Unlawfully Entangles Endangered Whales
Humpback whale.
Photo Courtesy: Ed Lyman/NOAA permit # 774-1714. 

Alaska’s untold secret” — the dividends paid by Southeast Alaska’s “Seabank”
By MARY CATHARINE MARTIN
A hiker looks out over forests, mountains, and ocean channels that comprise part of the Tongass National Forest, or SeaBank, in Southeast Alaska.
Photo by Howie Garber ©

Alaska: “Alaska’s untold secret” — the dividends paid by Southeast Alaska’s “Seabank” By MARY CATHARINE MARTIN - Wild salmon. Clean water. Clean air. Carbon storage. Climate change mitigation. Tourism, commercial fisheries — and billions of dollars in economic benefit.

Since 2018, the Alaska Sustainability Fisheries Trust (ASFT) has quietly published reports that upend managers’ historical ways of thinking about Southeast Alaska and the Tongass National Forest — and redefine priorities for management now and in the future. ASFT’s annual “SeaBank” report outlines and quantifies the benefits flowing from Southeast Alaska’ trees, estuaries, creeks, lakes, rivers, coasts, ocean and more. These benefits include goods and services that annually “renew,” provided that the natural capital on which they depend is never “overdrawn.”

In the language of the SeaBank, Southeast Alaska’s natural capital produces economic outputs from the seafood and visitor products industries worth several billion dollars a year to Southeast Alaska residents, non-resident workers, visitors and society as a whole. Ecosystem services provide this stream of income as natural capital. It’s a complex interplay of plant and animal communities and their environment that interact as one functional unit – SeaBank.

“The 2020 SeaBank report underscores that Southeast Alaska is one of the most productive ecosystems in the world,” said Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust founder and Sitka-based commercial fisherman Linda Behnken. “Southeast Alaska’s natural capital produces economic outputs worth several billion dollars a year, every year, to Southeast residents, visitors and society as a whole. This coastal ecosystem is also incredibly vulnerable to a rapidly warming climate and industrial activities that diminish the productivity of the underlying natural capital.”

ASFT released its 2020 SeaBank report at the end of last year. While the 129-page report contains a treasure trove of information to anyone looking to ensure the long-term profitability of the region, some key findings are: - More...
Wednesday PM - January 12, 2022

Sitka Black-tailed Deer
Just passing through a South Tongass yard during the recent snowy, freezing weather.
SitNews Front Page Photo by SUSAN HOYT ©2022
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CARL GOLDEN: BUILD BACK LATER - Build Back Better, the centerpiece of President Biden’s ambitious domestic legislative agenda, has become Build Back Later…maybe.

What was to have been the administration’s history-making signature accomplishment – a $1.75 trillion expansion of existing social welfare programs and the creation of new entitlements – now lies in ruins and the odds of its resurrection are beyond bleak.

What was to have arrested the president’s downward spiral in public support resulted instead in a further erosion of confidence in the administration’s competence. (The Real Clear Politics polling average, for instance, places Biden’s approval at 42 percent and disapproval at 53 percent.)

What was to have provided a record of achievement for Democratic congressional candidates to campaign on this year has instead highlighted the internal fissures in the party while adding greatly to their fears of a Republican sweep and seizing control of Congress. - More...
Wednesday PM - January 12, 2022

CHRISTINE FLOWERS: WHAT SIDNEY POITIER TAUGHT US ABOUT OURSELVES - When my sister texted to tell me that Sidney Poitier had passed away, I started crying.

All I could do was conjure up the black and white image of a beloved movie, “A Patch of Blue,” the film that made me fall in love with Poitier. It’s a powerful movie that carries as strong a message about anti-racism as “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner,” without its political posturing and preachiness.

It’s a simple story, about a young blind woman with an abusive mother and a loving but alcoholic “Opa,” or grandfather. One day, sitting in the park and working on the necklaces she sells to bring in a little money, a storm arises and her carefully organized tray of beads spills out onto the grass. It’s at that point that the Poitier character, passing through the park, runs to help her. A friendship develops. That friendship turns into love, at least from the young girl’s perspective. Poitier’s affection is a complicated mixture of attraction, brotherly protection and pity. - More...
Wednesday PM - January 12, 2022

SAM MARCUM: If You’re Starting a New Business, Don’t Make One of These 5 Common Mistakes - When starting a new business, you are bound to make at least several mistakes. No one has ever perfectly launched and run a business; therefore, it is important to give yourself some grace when embarking on your entrepreneurial journey. You can also prepare yourself in advance for some of the more common mistakes that new business owners tend to make.

SitNews shares five common errors that you can learn prior to launching your new company.

Not understanding how to properly run a business

While it is true that you don’t need formal business training to start a business, a significant number of people jump into entrepreneurship with zero understanding of how to run an organization. This includes knowing what permits and licenses are required, how to create a business plan, and how to keep track of profits and losses. Having at least a basic idea of how to do these things (and others) is essential in successfully starting your new company. - More...
Wednesday PM - January 12, 2020

FINANCIAL FOCUS: What should you know about investment risk? Provided By BEN EDWARDS, AAMS® - When you invest, you incur risk – there’s no avoiding it. But the concept of “risk” may be more expansive than you realized. And by understanding the different types of investment risk and how these risks can be addressed, you can improve your skills as an investor.

The most common perception of investment risk is simply the risk of losing money. When you invest in stocks and stock-based vehicles, such as mutual funds, there are no guarantees that your principal – your initial investment amount – will be preserved. Generally speaking, if you hold stocks or mutual funds over a period of years, and even decades, you can reduce the likelihood of sustaining losses that could send your investments’ value to zero. Hopefully, the value of your investments will rise over time. And it’s worth noting that, since the Great Depression, U.S. stocks have averaged 9.59% annual returns, according to Morningstar Direct, an investment research service. However, past performance can’t guarantee future results. - More...
Wednesday PM - January 12, 2022

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