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Saturday
December 27, 2014
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Winter Solstice Sunset
The winter solstice's sunset as viewed from Murphy's Landing approximately 6 miles north of Ketchikan.
The winter solstice was December 21st.
Front Page Photograph By ROSIE ROPPEL ©2014
(Please respect the rights of photographers, never republish or copy
without permission and/or payment of required fees.)
Fish Factor: Alaska's largest fisheries get underway in winter By LAINE WELCH - Salmon will always be the heart of Alaska’s fisheries, and that’s why most people think of summer as the fishing season. But that’s not the case.
The heart of winter is when Alaska’s largest fisheries get underway each year.
On January first, hundreds of boats with hook and line gear or pots begin plying the waters of the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska for Pacific cod, rockfish and other groundfish. Then on January 20th trawlers take to the seas to target Alaska pollock, the world’s largest food fishery with annual harvests topping three billion pounds.
Crab boats will soon be out on the Bering Sea for snow crab, Alaska’s largest crab fishery. Early March sees the start of the eight month long halibut and sablefish (black cod) seasons. March also marks the beginning of Alaska’s roe herring circuit, usually at Sitka Sound, and those fisheries will continue for several months all the way up the coast to Norton Sound.
And although wild Alaska king salmon is available from Southeast trollers for all but two weeks out of the year, mid-May is considered the “official” start of Alaska’s salmon season, when the runs of kings and reds return home to the Copper River.
Salmon fisheries take center stage all summer and into the fall - that means one of Alaska’s highlights: red king crab at Bristol Bay in mid-October … and so it goes through the end and start of each and every year. In all, more than five billion pounds of fish and shellfish crosses Alaska’s docks each year and the industry puts more people to work that oil/gas, mining, timber and tourism combined. - More....
Saturday PM - December 27, 2014
Alaska: Governor halts six projects - With the extensive drop in market oil prices contributing to a large budget deficit for the state, Governor Bill Walker (I-Alaska) issued an administrative order Friday to direct all state agencies to stop non-obligated spending on six projects.
Taking immediate action to ensure Alaska remains in a healthy fiscal position, state agencies were ordered by the Governor to halt to the maximum extent possible discretionary expenditures for the following six projects: Ambler Road, Juneau Access Road, Susitna-Watana Dam, Kodiak Launch Complex, Knik Arm Crossing and Alaska Stand Alone Pipeline Project.
“Our budget deficit grows deeper as oil prices go lower,” Governor Walker said. “These are large projects that require significantly more state investment to complete. I’ve requested that state agencies not enter into any new contracts until we’ve had a chance to look at the various projects.”
Walker and his team began working on his administrative order shortly after cutting the costliest projects out of the capital budget giving agency heads direction on exactly how to proceed with their respective projects.
Governor Walker requested the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, Department of Natural Resources, Alaska Energy Authority, Alaska Aerospace Corporation, Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority and Alaska Gasline Development Corporation submit by January 5th to the Office of Management and Budget a report detailing operating costs so far, all funding obligations, as well as the potential effects of delaying, suspending or terminating contracts.
“This is a way for us to not commit new money into projects that may not be continued during this fiscally challenging time,” Governor Walker said.
On December 23rd, responding to the urgency to reduce state spending in light of falling oil prices, the Senate and House Joint Leadership delivered a letter to Governor Walker requesting immediate budget implementations, including travel reductions and a freeze on hiring new state employees. The letter also requests that amendments for the FY 2016 operating budget be delivered as close to the start of session as possible, rather than waiting until the statutory deadline of February 18. - More...
Saturday PM - December 27, 2014 |
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Southeast Alaska: Two bat species newly recorded as Alaska residents By THERESA BAKKER - Two species of bats have been newly confirmed as Alaska residents, thanks in part to research conducted on specimens preserved among the collections at the University of Alaska Museum of the North.
A little brown myotis captured near Skagway, Alaska, carries a numbered wing band and a radio transmitter. The antenna is visible extending from the back.
Photo courtesy University of Alaska Museum of the North
The number of bat species known in Alaska has increased from six to eight with the publication of two studies in a special issue of the journal Northwestern Naturalist devoted to bat research in Alaska and Northwestern Canada. Mammal curator Link Olson (who co-edited the special issue), collection manager Aren Gunderson and two other authors re-examined specimens collected in the early 1990s from extreme Southeast Alaska and deposited in the University of Alaska Museum of the North mammal collection.
Olson said the bats were originally identified as the relatively common little brown myotis (Myotis lucifugus), which is both Alaska’s and North America’s most broadly distributed bat. The specimens bore some resemblance to the Yuma myotis (M. yumanensis), previously undocumented in Alaska but known from western British Columbia.
The two species are notoriously difficult to tell apart, despite being only distantly related, and are frequently misidentified even by experts. Using DNA extracted from dried skins, Olson and Gunderson confirmed that six specimens were actually M. yumanensis. - More...
Saturday PM - December 27, 2014
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Alaska Science: Far-north changes pondered By NED ROZELL - At the annual gathering of more than 20,000 Earth and space scientists in San Francisco, press conferences offered by the organizers featured scientists discussing everything from Mars rovers whiffing methane to Christmas lights visible from space. One press conference that has for a few years had a recurring slot at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union is the state of changes in the Far North.
An Arctic landscape north of the Brooks Range. Many scientists talked about "Arctic amplification" of warming signals at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
Photo by Ned Rozell.
Here's some highlights from that and a few of thousands of science bites offered at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union. The meeting is held every December in San Francisco.
The dark waters of the entire Arctic Ocean have absorbed the sun's rays at a rate that has increased five percent since 2000, detectors on satellites have shown. No other place on Earth is showing a similar increase in absorbing solar radiation, said Norman Loeb of NASA's Langley Research Center.
The Beaufort Sea north of Alaska and western Canada has absorbed heat at a much greater rate than the Arctic Ocean as a whole. Sea ice melting in greater amounts in June, July and August allows the ocean to capture heat that would have otherwise bounced off ice.
Scientists also found ocean temperatures near the surface are increasing one degree Fahrenheit per decade in the Chukchi Sea northwest of Alaska. That is one of the fastest rates measured on the planet.
Recent short-term measurements are even more extreme. In Bering Strait west of Wales, the sea-surface temperature in August 2014 was more than 7 degrees warmer than the average for the last 30 years. This fall, UAF researcher Russell Hoscroft reported ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Alaska were warmer than any his team had measured in the previous 16 years. - More...
Saturday PM - December 27, 2014 |
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Columns - Commentary
RICK JENSEN: Never Take Gun Advice From a Liberal - What part of "Hey, Kids! Steal your parents' guns and bring them to school!" sounds like a bad idea?
If you answered, "All of it," you may be a conservative.
A San Francisco production company, Sleeper 13 Productions, created what they call a "Public Service Announcement" video in which a young boy sneaks into his parents' bedroom, steals a handgun out of a dresser drawer and hides it in his backpack.
He then carries the gun onto the school bus and into a classroom. After class, he shocks the teacher at her desk by taking the gun out of his backpack and slamming it onto her desk.
"Can you take this away? I don't feel safe with a gun in my house," the boy pouts. - More...
Saturday PM - December 27, 2014
JEFF LUND: Warming up to the holidays - A shopping mall in December is a crockpot of humanity.
Key ingredients of buying, selling, eating, walking, resting, napping, whining and flirting all soaking in a bullion of voices and shoes on tile.
I’m not a big mall guy, but around Christmas time, it is certainly entertaining. If Christmas took my family out of Alaska, dad used to sit and count how many parents used to the ATM machine to keep their kids behaved while mom did her shopping. My buddy Nate and I did the same in a California mall a few years ago and were amazed at how well kids had their parents trained to dispense money at the sound of a scream.
This year, I did quick work of my shopping at a mall in Tucson and spent a good amount of time on the benches and chairs enjoying the happenings as mom made her rounds. - More...
Saturday PM - December 27, 2014 |
POLITICAL CARTOON: CLINTON, BUSH
BY Steve Sack, The Minneapolis Star
Distributed to subscribers for publication by Cagle Cartoons, Inc.
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 RE: Eighty-sixed By Matthew Felling - Greetings, Alaskans – I’d like to set the record straight on a recent letter published in SitNews on behalf of Senator Lisa Murkowski’s office. - More...
Tuesday PM - December 16, 2014
Parking - One More Thing By Chris Elliott - I ran into a young man at the grocery store parking lot the other day (not literally) after I had squiggeled around getting into a parking spot. He mentioned the web page. He was most upset because the postings were anonymous. If someone was anonymously posting nude pictures of his wife, I could see his point. He might want to have a talk with the person. But posting pictures of bad parking is a horse of a different color. In the common law, "res ipsa loquitur" (the thing itself speaks). - More...
Tuesday PM - December 16, 2014
Clear-cutting of the Tongass By Dominic Salvato - Why does the Sealaska Corporation mislead the public by inferring its shareholders are solely Alaska's native people? There are hundreds, if not thousands of Sealaska shareholders without one drop of native blood in their bodies. It's not wrong, it's a simple fact. - More...
Monday PM - December 15, 2014
Eighty-sixed By A. M. Johnson - I find that your fine online news outlet must be employed to transmit a message to our Alaska Congressional Senator, Senator Murkowski. As the subject line reflects, her office, if not herself, has terminated my access to her office via email. The following is my response and that termination notice. - More...
Monday PM - December 15, 2014
Share the road By Michael McColley- I've driven on every street in town. I have lived here all my life and traffic gets congested all the time. For those that pull half way out in traffic, try using the center lane. Don't challenge other cars to brake. Let people out. No one is going to lose sleep, we only have so much road. No one needs to have road rage. No one is going to get there any faster by driving fast or by being a discourteous driver. - More...
Monday PM - December 15, 2014
Hollowing Our Military By Donald A. Moskowitz - I have previously written about the disastrous impact of "sequestration" on our armed forces. Douglas Wissing delves into this topic in his article "RIF Tide" in the December 2014 issue of The American Legion Magazine, which I partially paraphrase in the next paragraph. - More...
Monday PM - December 15, 2014
States Are Waking Up -- They Can Stop Our Federal Government Overreach By Arthur Bedford - Executive amnesty for millions of illegal aliens, 3500 new business crushing regulations, the feds attempting to regulate our local police departments—all within the last two weeks! State governments are waking up to the fact that they have the power to stop this federal overreach, regain state sovereignty, and bring power back to the people through use of a tool our Constitutional Framers gave them for just this situation, an Article V Convention of States (COS). Recently, Conservative talk radio host Mark Levin, a vocal supporter of a Convention of states, addressed the annual conference of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an association of state lawmakers. He demanded that the hundreds of lawmakers in attendance “take your power back.” - More...
Monday PM - December 15, 2014
Timber Economics By Owen Graham - Let's talk about real timber economics. For years we have been listening to various environmental groups and others talk about Tongass timber sale subsidies. The reality is there are none; no matter how many times the falsehood is repeated. If the federal government provides billions in wind production tax credits; that's a subsidy. When corn farmers and ethanol producers receive billions in tax credits and have their products supported with an ethanol gas mandate; that's also a subsidy. However, if a local lumber yard or an appliance store spends more money selling lumber or appliances than it receives, that does not mean their customers are subsidized; it just means that the lumber yard or appliance store will soon go broke. Likewise, the timber industry is not subsidized when it purchases timber from the Forest Service. The industry is not responsible for, nor can it control how much a federal agency spends. - More...
Monday PM - December 08, 2014
The Missing Christmas Deer By Ted Cabot - Let me start by saying I am writing this letter for my wife. Every year she waits patiently for the Holidays, especially Christmas, her absolute favorite. In our house, she without question is in charge of decorating the outside of our home, she does the inside as well, but her real joy is doing the outside. We live on lower Fairy Chasm Rd. so I'm sure there are many of you who know which house it is. She enjoys many, many compliments from the good people of Ketchikan every year, so you can see what motivates her to decorate the way she does. And yes, the house looks great every Christmas. She does try to do different things each year. And always does a great job. - More...
Monday PM - December 08, 2014
Nut Cracker Performance By A. M. Johnson - The performance of the Nut-Cracker this year is one for the record books. The performance of the children and young adults in learning the parts, learning their marks, and presentation in tune with the music score was absolutely outstanding. There was not a glitch, nor a miss in the timing, The set design was superb reflecting long backstage hours in preparation. To see the continued depth of adult thespians in accompanying roles in this production reflects the continued outstanding level of talent viewed in First City Player productions. - More...
Monday PM - December 08, 2014
Joy to the World By Judith Green - This past week end the Ketchikan Community Chorus, under the direction of Stephen Kinney, shared their music and talents with "The Songs of the People-around the world" as the title "Joy to the World" would suggest: Israeli, Serbian, American, French, Ukraine, Africa. - More...
Monday PM - December 08, 2014
Parking Failures By Chris Elliott - Donita O'Dell's letter prompts this response. Lighten up! If someone is having a heart attack & you park outside the lines at PeaceHealth, I don't think your photo's going to show up. If you park your little tiny Prius in the cart return lane, you deserve a little attention. If you're a jerk and you park like a jerk then you're going to respond to this "shaming" like a jerk. If you're a normal person who, for one reason or another, misparked your car, you're going to take it like a normal person and chuckle at being "outed." - More...
Monday PM - December 08, 2014
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