KFSK - Petersburg

A Senate committee heard Monday from supporters and opponents of state involvement in the management of sea otters in Southeast Alaska.

The Senate Resources Committee held its first hearing on Senate Joint Resolution 13, which calls on the federal government to allow the state or a Native organization to co-manage the rebounding marine mammals and seek ways to increase harvest of otters.

“We’re urging the federal agencies to work with state, Native and local leaders to establish a sea otter management plan to protect the shellfish resources and subsistence availability,” said Sitka Republican committee member Bert Stedman, who sponsored the resolution.

Once nearly hunted to extinction in the region, otters are protected under federal law.

Only coastal Alaska Natives are allowed to hunt them and sell products made from pelts.

The resolution calls on Congress to change the Marine Mammal Protection Act to allow expanded use of those pelts.

The measure also urges the transfer of otter management to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game or National Marine Fisheries Service.

Commercial fishing organizations and municipalities have called for the changes to slow the increase in Southeast’s otters because of their impact on shellfish and other sea food.

Commercial sea cucumber diver Stephanie Jurries of Craig told of a rapid loss of fishing areas on the western shore of Prince of Wales Island.

“The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has done a good job of managing our fisheries but their management strategy cannot take into account the impact of the otters,” Jurries said during testimony. “Something else needs to be done. Rural fishermen and communities need your help with this issue.”

However, the resolution is opposed by the Alaska Sea Otter and Stellar Sea Lion Commission, a statewide tribal consortium along with the Organized Village of Kake.

Wade Martin of Sitka testified against the Senate resolution and a companion bill in the House.

He and others thought more could be done under existing law to encourage hunting by Alaska Natives.

“I’ve personally probably shot over 3,000, easy over 3,000 sea otters in my career of hunting and in our region here in Sitka we’re on a rebound,” Martin said. “We’re picking abalone now and I see urchin, I see rock scallop, I see everything around in the water now where we used to see it. It’s taken me 25 years to get these guys in check here. If everybody did their part as far as being a quarter coastal Native we wouldn’t have this problem.”

U.S. Fish and Wildlife reports annual harvest of otters in the region since the year 2000 has fluctuated, with a low of 255 to a high of 1,494 depending on the year.

The state reintroduced 400 otters to Southeast in the 1960s and population estimates now put their numbers upwards of 25,000.

The Board of Fisheries this month also drafted a letter to the Congressional delegation and secretaries of Interior and Commerce asking for review and changes to the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

The Senate committee set the bill aside for changes.

Petersburg Borough Assembly joined the call this month for measures to slow a growing population of sea otters in Southeast, as the marine mammals are impacting shellfish stocks.

The Assembly passed a resolution at its March 5 meeting, calling for the federal government to work with the State of Alaska and Alaska Native tribes to establish strategies for an ecological balance of shellfish resources and the reintroduced sea otters.

The municipal government sought input on the problem and received letters from commercial fishing organizations like the Petersburg Vessels Owners Association, United Southeast Alaska Gillnetters and the Southeast Alaska Regional Dive Fisheries Association.

Those letters call for measures to increase the harvest of otters and allowances for expanded use of their pelts by coastal Alaska Natives.

Sea otters are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and only coastal Alaska Natives are allowed to hunt them and sell products made from otter pelts.

Petersburg Assembly member Eric Castro was convinced to pass the resolution in support of changes to otter management.

“All the letters written to this point have been very compelling by all the individuals and groups,” Castro said. “I sincerely hope that our federal officials take note on our comments.”

Otters in Southeast were nearly hunted to extinction in the early 1900s, but were reintroduced by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in the 1960s.

Otter numbers in parts of the region are growing by as high 13 percent a year and they now number in the tens of thousands.

They’re also expanding back into parts of the Panhandle that haven’t seen otters since the height of the fur trade.

Commercial fishermen have called on the state’s Board of Fisheries, the congressional delegation and the president to slow the otters’ impact on clams, crab and other seafood.

Petersburg’s resolution calls for more active management to combat growing otter populations and involvement by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and Alaska Native tribes.

It combines some of the language from a state resolution introduced by Republican state Sen. Bert Stedman along with resolutions from other municipalities and organizations.

Assembly member and Alaska Department of Fish and Game research diver Jeff Meucci originally suggested the Assembly pass such measure but questioned some of the wording.

“It also says be it further resolved that it authorize the Alaska Native organization or the Alaska Department of Fish and game to take as many marine mammals as necessary,” Meucci said. “If we’re not really concerned with what it says that’s fine but it just seems kinda unrealistic to expect Fish and Game to be harvesting marine mammals.”

Meucci did not suggest any changes to the wording and the assembly passed it by a 6-0 vote.

Meanwhile the state resolution calls for the federal government to allow the state to co-manage sea otters and increase harvest of the federally protected marine mammals. It has been referred to the Senate Resources Committee.

A companion bill has been introduced in the House.

The Organized Village of Kake opposes the state resolution.

In February, the tribal government for the community on Kupreanof Island passed its own resolution, which says “fish and game resources managed by the state of Alaska such as (but not limited to) salmon, herring, shellfish, Sitka black tail deer have not proven to be sustainable and cannot be used as a model for successful management.”

Kake opposes state involvement in the management of otters.

Petersburg will start charging a $5-a-head fee for passengers on cruise ships in 2019.

Petersburg’s borough assembly gave final approval Monday to the new charge, despite a lawsuit over a similar fee in Juneau and concerns from the cruise ship industry.

Among Southeast communities, Petersburg will join Juneau and Ketchikan in charging a local fee on passengers, sometimes called a head tax.

Petersburg’s assembly has gone back and forth over what to call it because of concerns that the industry has sued Juneau over use of head tax money.

This month they agreed to change the name back to a marine passenger fee, instead of an infrastructure fee.

Eric Castro agreed to reverse course from the name change he suggested at the last meeting.

“After we received a letter from our attorney, she made a good point mentioning how the term infrastructure only refers to physical structures and that we shouldn’t probably limit the way we can spend money on so severely,” Castro said. “So for example we might be able to be able to use the marine passenger fee to be able to fund training of personnel, an activities director, any type of part time position and many things that aren’t a physical building.”

Cruise companies that stop in Petersburg, haven’t opposed the fee but have asked for changes.

Rick Erickson of the Cruise Line Agencies of Alaska wrote to the borough asking to table the ordinance and come up with a more narrowly focused fee for infrastructure that would aid cruise ships.

“The broad nature of the proposed ordinance to allow for funding of services to passengers and not just vessels is at the heart of the legal debate between Cruise Lines International Association of Alaska and the City and Borough of Juneau,” Erickson wrote.

Other companies have asked for a delay in implementation, because they’ve already priced their cruises for the next two years, or ways to encourage ships to start and end their trips here.

Assembly member Jeff Meucci proposed an amendment clarifying that ships starting and ending a cruise in Petersburg will only be charged once.

Kurt Wohlhueter wanted to consider an exemption for boats homeported here.

“We’re in a unique position right now where we could be the only community in Southeast that doesn’t charge a head tax for anybody who wants to homeport out of Petersburg and I think that’s something that we need to consider,” Wohlhueter said. “Because they’re gonna to bring that money in here, they’re gonna spend the night here, their ships are going to be moored here, we’re gonna make more money on those people then those that just do touch and gos. So instead of passing this amendment, you know we should consider, if they want to homeport here, not to charge them any head tax at all and then let main street benefit from the added income that they’re gonna spend here.”

Nevertheless, Meucci’s amendment passed with only Wohlhueter voting no.

Only smaller to mid-size ships stop in Petersburg, which doesn’t have a deep water port to accommodate the larger vessels.

Because of that, the community only sees a few thousand passengers a year. At best, the new fee is expected to raise about $30,000 a year, not the millions paid to larger communities in Southeast.

Assembly member Jeigh Stanton Gregor thought it would still pay for important improvements.

“That could be great money to invest let’s say new bathrooms, more subtle infrastructure over time that could also contribute to a ship wanting to homeport here, being able to invest that back into our infrastructure for that,” Stanton Gregor said. “I know it’s not a ton of money but, we’re so limited in exactly what we can use it for it’d be a good asset for the cruise industry as well.”

Use of the money will be determined by the assembly during the annual budget process, but the ordinance also includes a broad list of the types of expenditures it can go toward.

Those include capital improvements for ships or their passengers, land or building purchases to help the industry, along with passenger surveys, along with personnel and equipment needed as a result of cruise ship visits.

Mayor Mark Jensen didn’t want a lawsuit over Petersburg’s fee.

“I just am concerned about not generating enough money,” Jensen said. “I know it would add up but I’m just worried about any kind of litigation towards the city, so I will be voting no on this.”

Jensen and Wohlhueter were the only no votes and the amended fee passed on a 5-2 vote in third and final reading.

It takes effect in January 2019 and will be based on passenger manifests of ships docking in Petersburg’s harbors.

It also exempts ships with 20 or fewer passengers.

In February, Petersburg High School students joined teams from around the state in an 20th annual ocean sciences competition in Seward.

In Alaska, the National Ocean Sciences Bowl regional competition has three parts.

Teams prepare a 15-page research paper and create a 15-minute presentation on that topic.

The third part is the quiz bowl, in which teams of four students answer questions on topics ranging from ocean chemistry, plate tectonics, waves and wind, sea life and governmental policy.

The teams staged a practice quiz bowl in Petersburg before leaving for the competition.

A co-captain Anders Christensen was fast on the buzzer during the quiz bowl in Seward for Petersburg’s team of five seniors, who called themselves Team Far Fetched.

“Quiz bowl I think I could’ve done a lot better but our team was doing very well,” Christensen said. “Our first Mat-Su match did not go well. But we played them the next day and it was a lot closer.”

That Mat-Su Valley team was a perennial powerhouse, but ended up losing in the championship bracket and beat the Petersburg team in the match for fifth and sixth place.

But Team Far Fetched took second overall for their research paper.

They researched extreme wind conditions and explained how icing could impact boats commercial fishing.

They had prepared a 20-minute presentation but found out last minute they needed to edit that down to 15 minutes.

“We had a good time,” said Gabe Torrez, another team member. “It was a pity that we got cut short on our presentation, but aside from that I thought the presentation went pretty well.”

The team worked on their paper for three months this fall and the presentation a month and a half this winter.

“We’ve all kind of been in it together for I think a minimum of three years for all of us, a minimum of three years of us all working together so we definitely have gotten used to each other and kinda know how each other works when we’re quizzing,” said Helen Martin, another co-captain. “We got to be able to use that and we’re all pretty good friends so it was fun.”

Martin and Joey Giesbrecht were on the team for four years, the other three had been with the team for three.

Martin described what the quiz bowl is like.

“I actually thought it was a little bit more stressful this year than it was in the last years because we’re like a team of all seniors and it was our last year so we had to find the combination of wanting to have fun but also wanting to do really well,” Martin said. “But I thought we did really well in the end even though it was really stressful.”

Another team member Marissa Nilsen felt the pressure during the quiz bowl as well.

“It was hard to still focus on just enjoying the time that we had there and just being with the team, but our last couple of rounds in the first bracket actually ended really nicely,” Nilsen said. “By the end we were laughing, we were having fun, we were smiling at the other teams instead of kind of like falling into deep pits of despair thinking we were gonna lose.”

Petersburg High School was represented by two teams at the tournament.

The second team went by the name “Team Tidal Here.”

While senior Taryn Copeland and freshman Rose Lane didn’t make the trip, Liam Demko and Jaden Perry, both freshmen, did. They ended up competing with a student from Ketchikan and one from Dimond High in Anchorage, and took ninth with their research paper on extreme rains.

Demko explained how the competition went for him.

“Since we’re all relatively new, it was kind of hard to get into it and know what we’re supposed to be doing,” Demko said. “But in the end it worked out fairly well so I guess I’m happy for that.”

In the quiz bowl, “Team Tidal Here” did well enough to qualify for the championship bracket, but because it was a team from multiple schools they were placed in the consolation bracket.

They ended up 15th.

Demko and Perry also were the first out of all the groups to give their presentation.

The teams are coached by volunteers Sunny Rice and Joni Johnson, who meet with the students twice a week after school to work on their papers, presentations and practice quiz bowl questions.

We didn’t get to see all the presentations which we usually do,”Rice said. “The ones that we did see I thought were good.”

Joni Johnson explained it’s a pretty rigorous weekend of answering quiz bowl questions for the students.

“Basically from 10 until 5 on Saturday they had seven matches,”  Johnson said. “It was a good seven hours I guess of having your brain turned on and then Sunday was a similar thing from 8 until noon. Not a whole lot of down time at all.”

Students also got a chance to tour the Alaska Sea Life Center and hear from scientists about how they got started in their careers.

The winning team from Cordova earned a trip to the national competition in Boulder, Colorado.

Despite three days of impassioned testimony before the Board of Fisheries in January, not much has changed for the Sitka Sound sac roe herring fishery, which will ramp up in about a month.

Local subsistence harvesters won an increase in the size of their exclusive use area, but failed to persuade the board to reduce the commercial catch.

Fishermen and processors from Petersburg joined with other commercial interests to remind the board of the economic importance of the annual springtime export.

Commercial fishing representatives at January’s meeting testified in oral and written comments about the economic importance of the annual fishery in Sitka Sound.

Icicle Seafoods processes some of the catch at its Petersburg plant and the company’s John Woodruff talked about the impact to the Petersburg economy.

Charges have been filed against two Petersburg teenagers who allegedly hit multiple deer in town with their truck last week.

The teenagers both say what happened Feb. 5 was an accident.

In court documents, they say that they were trying to scare the deer for fun, they were not trying to hit the deer.

But a video recording of the incident could paint a different story, showing the teens hitting the deer with their truck and laughing about it.

The teenager in the passenger side of the truck recorded the incident on video and posted it on the social media app, Snapchat. Both of these teens are 17 years old.

[This video could be disturbing to some viewers because of its violent nature.]

The video is taken from inside the truck and shows the vehicle approaching and then hitting two deer with a third one further up the road.

It takes place in broad daylight on Wrangell Avenue in a residential neighborhood.

Alaska State Wildlife Troopers in Petersburg received the video Feb. 7 and investigated.

Troopers charged each of the teens with harassing game and one of them for reckless driving.

Misdemeanor charges of harassing game could bring a $400 fine per deer. Reckless driving also is a misdemeanor.

The troopers say according to the video, the teens drove directly at the deer and did not try to avoid them.

The District Attorney’s Office in Sitka is handling the case.

The teenagers admitted to hitting a third deer the night before.

They say the deer jumped out in front of their truck. Troopers found deer hair on the truck and a broken headlight on the driver’s side.

The third deer was on Sandy Beach Road. A dead deer was found on that road the same night by a resident.

There were no other witnesses to the actual act of the teens hitting the deer.

The teens say the deer did not die from what they saw.

They say the two deer they hit in the video ran off into a yard.

They say the third deer they hit the night before laid down in the road and then got up and walked toward the beach.

In an e-mail, trooper spokeswoman Megan Peters said that blood was found near the scene of the two deer that were hit but no deceased animals were found.

She said the charges reflect what troopers believe they have evidence to support.

The teens’ arraignment is scheduled at 3:15 p.m. Feb. 26 in Petersburg Superior Court.