Alaska Public Media

The move by Kodiak Police Department to discontinue the use of video cameras attached to officers’ uniforms was a surprise to Kodiak Mayor Pat Branson and the city council.

The discontinuance of using body cameras was confirmed in an e-mail from Police Chief Ronda Wallace.

“Well, it’s an administrative and police policy,” said Branson, who was out of state last week. “The council doesn’t get into that. And we are being presented with that information.”

When Branson was informed of the change to police procedure, she asked that the chief make a presentation to the city council.

“We will have that information as to why that decision made,” she said, “and then it will be made public, as well.”

The report will be made in open session, and not in a closed, executive session, she said.

Video from an incident with KPD officers nearly one year ago is central to an ongoing civil lawsuit claiming excessive use of force, but the mayor said that denying video evidence in police misconduct cases is definitely not one of the reasons for discontinuing use of the police body cams.

The city of Kodiak is currently defending itself against two alleged police misconduct cases.

Despite Mayor Branson has asked for the report from the police chief, it has not appeared on tonight’s work session agenda or Thursday night’s regular meeting agenda.

For a couple of Petersburg fishermen, it was a big day … and a huge catch.

A nearly 400-pound halibut caught by local fishermen near Petersburg over the weekend wasn’t record breaking, but was still pretty darn huge.

Petersburg fishermen Brian Mattson and Doug Corl were out long-lining in Frederick Sound when they had an unexpected visitor.

“Didn’t even know it was on until we saw it from the surface,” Mattson said. “Put the shark hook on it, used the winch to bring it up and didn’t even make a move whatsoever, it just came right in nice and easy.”

He’s talking about a 396-pound halibut.

The fish would have to weigh into the upper 400s to beat the world record.

Petersburg Fisheries Inc., or PFI, one of Petersburg’s main fish processers, was bustling with workers, but a handful of people made their way outside to watch the F/V Day Spring pull up to unload an unusually large fish.

“It just kept coming and coming and then we knew it was big once it took a long time to get it winched up there,” Mattson said.

Mattson has been fishing since he was a teenager, but he’s never caught a halibut quite this large, he said.

“I think in the low 300s we got,” Mattson said. “But this is definitely the biggest Doug and I has ever caught.”

Mattson was surprised to see the massive fish come out of the water.

Originally, they thought it was even bigger.

“Last night it measured out to 92, 93 inches,” says Mattson. “And in the tide book it said it was like 435,” he said. “The NOAA observer measured and looked it up, he thought it was 450, 470. But it all depends on how thick they are.”

The boat’s long-lining equipment made it easier to pull in the fish.

“A lot of guys go out in the smaller boats and don’t have the wenches and stuff to do it,” Mattson said. “And that would be tough to get on board.”

Mattson and Corl brought the fish back to be processed at PFI.

International Pacific Halibut Commission’s Levy Boiter made it down to see the fish’s arrival.

“This is definitely not the average fish,” he said.

Two adventurers have turned a hobby into a career and now spend their time traveling the country and recording trails via video so that other people can hike, bike, run and ride them.

This summer, Discover Kodiak hired Trail Genius to record real-time video and collect information about roughly 28 trails in Kodiak, including Termination Point, Pyramid, and Barometer, using ATVs, their own two legs and their equipment.

Jason Manders and his partner, Amanda Campbell, are based in Wisconsin and began the Kodiak project in mid-June.

“We had a really great time,” Manders said. “We were surprised by the rainforest-type environment. The lush plants – that was a surprise and really cool. All the berries and the moss all over the ground. We kept thinking we were in some sort of enchanted forest or something.”

Manders has been biking his entire life and he started recording trails to help other bikers decide whether they wanted to explore that trail or not, he said. He did that as a hobby for two or three years, then he was “discovered.”

“And then we got a call from a large trail entity that has trails all over the world and they asked us to build this interactive experience of their bike trails as far as New Zealand, and that’s when we realized we could actually make money doing this,” Manders said.

Manders and Campbell received business from races, triathlons and other event-holders that cover activities from driving snowmobiles to ATVs.

Campbell, who’s also a graphic designer, said Manders introduced her to biking prior to starting the business.

While on the island, they decided to get married, a ceremony which Discover Kodiak executive director Chastity McCarthy said she officiated.

“They were like, ‘we’ll just come into your office tomorrow and we can do it’ and ‘I’m like, okay, that’ll work,'” McCarthy said. “But once they got in there, I was like well our office is this old wood paneling and it’s not that awesome. Let me go talk to the construction workers outside and see if they’ll us do it on the new pier.”

“So I ran out there, the construction workers walked us through safely because there were still some little spots going on,” she said. “It was funny because I married them within about 10 minutes and then afterwards the construction workers were cheering and we didn’t even know they had been watching.”

McCarthy says Trail Genius might be back next summer to map more trails, but the current progress will be available online in December.

Adventurers will be able to click through the trails, see real-time videos and learn about trails’ heights, elevations and terrains.

A recreational vehicle crashed into the back of a tour bus Sunday on the Richardson Highway, or Alaska Route 4, injuring more than a dozen people.

The northbound bus was making a left turn off the highway to the Princess Lodge in Copper Center, when the RV hit it, according to Alaska State Troopers.

The accident occurred at mile 101 on the Richardson.

13 bus passengers were taken to hospitals by ground or air ambulance, Trooper spokesman Tim Despain said. Two Life Flight airplanes and a helicopter assisted in the transport. Despain said there is no word yet on the severity of the injuries.

The driver of the RV was Jesse Johnson, 47, of Anchorage. It wasn’t clear whether Johnson will face citations.

Three passengers were in the RV. The bus, operated by North Pole Tours of Fairbanks, carried 32 passengers.

Updated 10:00 a.m. Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2016: Delta Air Lines announced it was grounding nearly 300 flights Tuesday, a day after a computer outage hobbled the carrier’s communication and booking systems and forced it to cancel about 1,000 flights worldwide.

– NPR

Originally posted 6:13 p.m. Monday, Aug. 8, 2016: Delta Air Lines said it’s investigating the cause of today’s power outage that knocked out its computer systems worldwide. Delta canceled more than 450 flights by early afternoon, and a flight tracking service counted 2,000 delayed flights.

The event interrupted the travel plans of some Alaska residents. Among them, Dave Bass.

“We are trying to come home from Minneapolis,” Bass said.

Bass lives in Anchorage — his wife works for Alaska Public Media — and he said his family learned of the Delta problems over social media. Their early morning flight was rescheduled to the evening, and we spoke as they were driving back to the airport Monday afternoon. Bass is hoping service will be restored and he’ll be back home around midnight.

“Basically they told us if we don’t get on this flight we could be here for a long time,” Bass said.

Delta service out of Anchorage was almost back to normal as of Monday afternoon, with the company’s flights still scheduled to depart from Ted Stevens International airport, though with hours-long delays. Delta’s Monday morning flight from Juneau to Seattle was about 35 minutes late, and it’s Monday evening flight is expected to be on time, according to Delta’s online flight status.

Delta hasn’t commented on whether its IT system has enough built-in backups to quickly recover from a hiccup like a power outage.

The cable vessel Ile de Sein is on its way to the North Slope, where soon it’ll lay hundreds of miles of fiber optic cable for the Quintillion high-speed internet project.

Before shipping out this weekend, though, the vessel stopped in Unalaska to host a group of Quintillion’s investors, industry partners, and other supporters — including Governor Bill Walker.

It was Walker’s first trip to Unalaska in two years. He said he came to get a closer look at one of the ships bringing better internet to rural Alaska.

“Alaska is changing,” said Walker. “Alaska is changing because the Arctic is opening up. So to be able to have this opportunity for Alaska — the connectivity with the rest of the world with the high-speed internet this is going to provide — it’s pretty exciting.”

Walker wasn’t the only high-profile guest. The Ile de Sein also welcomed Alaska Senator Donny Olson, D-Golovin, as well as representatives from the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, the Calista Corporation and ConocoPhillips.

Quintillion hasn’t confirmed the names of its customers in the telecom industry, but CEO Elizabeth Pierce said representatives from OTZ Telephone Cooperative, TelAlaska, AT&T, and Verizon also toured the ship.

While Quintillion still is focused on finishing the first phase of the cable system this summer, Pierce said her team already is considering where to expand next.

They haven’t made any decisions yet, but she said they’re looking at future Alaska landing sites beyond the original six in Nome, Kotzebue, Wainwright, Point Hope, Barrow, and Prudhoe Bay.

“We’ve gotten the message loud and clear, and we’ll see what we can do to make Dutch Harbor a future landing,” Pierce said.

For now, though, the Ile de Sein is traveling to Wainwright. The ship will arrive toward the end of the week and start laying 1,500 tons of fiber optic cable along the North Slope. Meanwhile, its sister ship — the Ile de Brehat — has finished the landing site at Nome and is now heading north through the Bering Strait.

Pierce said the Quintillion project is still on schedule to deliver high-speed internet in the first quarter of 2017.