KDLG - Dillingham

 

Bob Murphy, the Area Management Biologist at Port Moller, said the North Peninsula has had a strong harvest so far this summer, with a little more than 3 million sockeye hauled in for the entire North Alaska Peninsula management area, including Nelson Lagoon and the Northwestern District harvests. That’s more than the 2.2 million sockeye harvest forecast.

Area M fishermen have hauled in nearly 9 million salmon so far this summer, including almost 5.5 million sockeye. Most of that catch comes from the North Alaska Peninsula.

The catches were strong enough to prompt processors to limit fishermen’s daily deliveries for most of July; a move that Murphy said has been common in recent years. Murphy said most rivers also went over their escapement goals.

But not every section performed as well. The Outer Port Heiden section is at the northwest end of the North Alaska Peninsula fishery, and genetics last spring showed that many of those fish are headed on to the Ugashik District in Bristol Bay. Despite a good year in Ugashik, Murphy said it was not a particularly strong year at Outer Port Heiden.

“Overall, the harvest in the Outer Port Heiden section this year was not as strong as we typically see it,” Murphy said. “We had about 585,000 fish harvested in the OPH section to date. That’s probably average or actually maybe even below average, considering that we did have pretty strong runs throughout the North Peninsula and Bristol Bay this year.”

The last Outer Port Heiden fishing period closed at 6 p.m. July 27. Elsewhere in the North Peninsula, catches will continue through August and beyond. The late Bear River sockeye run typically begins around August 1 and continues through mid-September, depending when processors stop buying.

“It’s not as strong as the early run at Bear River, but it is a significant run and in some years has produced catch and escapement of over a million fish,” Murphy said.

The United Fishermen of Alaska is working on a project to figure out what issues the salmon fleet is concerned about – and how to reach the commercial fishermen.

“Our goal is to get more efficient as a committee, to get more efficient as an organization, to help consolidate information, to ensure that salmon fishermen in Alaska are as informed as they want to be about what’s happening with salmon habitat,” said Lindsey Bloom, an at-large board member of UFA. “Our hunch is that they will then be engaged with decision-makers about what’s happening.”

The project developed as UFA board members noticed just how overwhelming the wide-range of salmon habitat concerns and information can be.

“There’s just so much coming at us in such a quickly changing world, that we are hoping that we can help consolidate information, distill it down, and present it and provide it to a fishermen in a way that’s more tangible and less overwhelming,” Bloom said.

The group is exploring communication to find a more tangible, less overwhelming way of presenting information.

“Communications … in some ways there’s a lot of opportunity, but we just don’t know or understand what works best for fishermen,” Bloom said. “For example, do they want to be texted to be notified about public comment periods about habitat issues, or are they active enough on social media that they’re going to get all their information that way, or how much of the fleet just wants to get something in the mail.”

To gather all that information, there’s a survey online at UFAfish.org.

At least two bears have been disturbing Dillingham residents over the past two days.

18-year-old Perez Hiratsuka was home alone taking a nap Thursday afternoon when sounds just outside the family’s wooden cabin woke her up.

“When I finally got the courage to get up and look at what’s going on because neither of my parents were home, I looked towards the door and a big thump from behind me made a move,” Hiratsuka said. “It shook the whole wall. I didn’t know what to do. I was scared to death.”

The bear tore a hole in the wall and tried to get inside. Hiratsuka grabbed an ax, left the house, and walked up to a neighbor’s house without incident. She saw the large brown bear just once, still trying to get in the hole it tore.

Perez Hiratsuka’s dad, Aaron Hiratsuka, was at the Gusty’s Yard working on a boat when he got word of the incident and began running home as fast as he could. He was grateful to Diane Folsom, who picked him up and sped him the rest of the way to his driveway.

“I got down here, and I was hollering for my daughter and she wasn’t in the house. I didn’t know she’d gone up to the neighbors,” Aaron said. “That’s when I really started getting hysterical. I was looking for any kind of blood trails, anything, you know scared, freaking out.”

Animal Control Officer Dan Boyd, who responded to the Kanakanak Road incident, said the two bears have been causing trouble in different areas of town.

“We have a bear, a small bear, that is running around in HUD, Snag Point area, out to the Harbor, that’s where it’s been it’s been headed,” Boyd said.  “And this bear here has been terrorizing Bea Avenue, Arctic Boulevard, and now over here on Kanakanak Road.”

Both bears have been sighted numerous times Wednesday and Thursday. Fish and Game, State Troopers, Dillingham Police and other authorities have responded quickly to each location but haven’t said if they plan to trap or kill the nuisance bears.

Authorities are advising caution with children and pets, and recommend cleaning up anything that might attract bears into yards like trash, pet food, and especially fish guts.

A Dillingham woman has been missing in Juneau for nearly three months. The family of 30-year-old LoriDee Wilson has no information on her whereabouts, but hopes she’ll be found alive.

Wilson came to Juneau in mid-March to get drug addiction treatment program at the Rainforest Recovery Center.

Wilson’s older sister Gwen Larson said she last spoke to her younger sister on the phone on March 24th. At that point, Wilson had been at the hospital less than two weeks, but Larson said she seemed to be in a good state of mind during the phone call.

“And apparently that evening, she walked away,” Larson said. “We got notified that she was no longer at her treatment center on 28th or 29th of March, and so my father went down that weekend, and stayed down there for a while looking for her.”

The family reported Wilson as missing to the Juneau Police Department, and in early April, Larson also went down to Juneau to look.

She posted photos of her sister: 5-foot-4 and 130 pounds, with curly, dark brown, shoulder-length hair. Larson said there were several reported sightings of Wilson during that time, but she couldn’t confirm any.

“So I was constantly watching the bus routes, and I’d go to the store and just sit in the parking lot in hopes that I’d accidentally run into her. Because we don’t know what kind of state she’s in, if she’s OK, or … we just don’t know,” said Larson.

To Larson’s knowledge, Wilson doesn’t know anyone in Juneau outside the hospital, and she has not made contact with her friends, parents or three young sons back in Dillingham.

And, to add to her family’s concerns, Wilson is now overdue for a throat surgery that she gets each year due to a childhood accident that left her airway constricted.

“She hasn’t scheduled that yet, we talked to her doctor. And this is a thing she has to get every year, she has to have her throat dilated, for the last 20 years she’s had it done,” Larson explained. “We’re worried for her that she could choke, because usually when it’s close to surgery time, she has to have soft foods.”

Larson said the past few months have been difficult on the family, but they are holding out hope that Wilson is still alive.

“If she hears this, we love and care for her and we want her to call us,” said Larson, “and her kids miss her.”

If you have any information regarding LoriDee Wilson of Dillingham, call the Juneau Police Department at (907) 586-0600 or contact Gwen Larson at (907) 843-1412.

Dozens of firefighters are battling a wildfire northeast of McGrath that has grown rapidly over the past few days.

Tim Mowry is a public information officer for the Division of Forestry.

“There’s three fires actually,” Mowry said. “There’s two fires that are substantial and then there was another hot spot that was picked up and those have all merged into one fire now: The Medfra fire, which we’re estimating currently approximately 8,130 acres. So it’s grown considerably as a result of those fires merging together.”

Mowry said the Division of Forestry has four crews on the 8,000-acre fire, including smokejumpers and nearly 80 personnel.
The Medfra fire was first reported Sunday morning.

Fire managers said the wind shifted Tuesday, turning the spread of the blaze back toward McGrath. Mowry said the crews are primarily trying to protect Native allotments, including a cabin, just south of the fire.