Southeast

A draft of the 20-year plan for Alaska’s state ferry system is open for public comment. Officials with the Alaska Department of Transportation are asking residents to weigh in on the plan that will guide the Alaska Marine Highway System through the year 2045.

The long-range plan seeks to increase service to over 30 ports. In recent years, port calls have decreased and coastal communities have repeatedly voiced their concern.

In an online public meeting March 19, AMHS Director Craig Tornga said the system is planning for more reliable service – not increasing it much but bringing it back to pre-pandemic levels.

“We’re really looking at trying to increase the port calls at our current communities and to make sure that we have some reliable service on a regular basis that can be planned,” said Tornga. “And then keeping it as efficient as we can from a cost perspective for the state, so it can be maintainable going forward.”

The state plans to build new hybrid ferries to replace the aging fleet, hire more workers to run them, and improve infrastructure at the ports.

That, plus regular maintenance, will cost about $3 billion. The plan to pay for it includes a combination of state and federal money along with increasing profits from ridership.

In creating the plan, the state hired engineering and research groups to crunch data and gather information from dozens of coastal communities. Economist Katie Berry said the ferry plan anticipates the state to appropriate roughly $120 million a year in operating costs. The 20-year plan also calculates that federal funding remains intact.

“The expectation is that the federal funding sources that have pre-dated the Federal Infrastructure Act will be stable over this time period,” Berry said.

The Infrastructure Law brought in about $700 million in federal funds to the ferry system in the last three years. Meanwhile, Gov. Mike Dunleavy has vetoed millions in state ferry funding that the Alaska Legislature approved.

Efforts for a long-range plan began in 2022 after the Legislature created the Alaska Marine Highway Operations Board to help guide the state’s DOT. The nine-member board is made up of state workers and coastal residents with ferry knowledge.

The public comment period on the long-range plan ends March 30. The operations board will consider the plan in April before it heads to the Legislature. According to state law, the plan will be updated every five years.

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Glaciers shape the land and lives of Alaskans — carving mountains, funneling cold freshwater into rivers, carrying nutrients to the sea and reflecting sunlight back to space. 

Friday marked the first-ever World Day for Glaciers, a day observed by the United Nations to sound the alarm on the accelerating pace of global melting. Scientists who study Alaska glaciers spoke about their research to uncover how these rapidly changing systems affect our world. 

Kiya Riverman studies what makes glaciers flow as a glaciologist and associate director of the Juneau Icefield Research Program. 

“Often we have this sense that glaciers are this really static thing,” she said.  

Before and after pictures show glaciers retreating, sure, but usually over the span of years and decades. It’s much faster than that, she said. 

“They’re almost like living, breathing creatures that change a little bit every day,” she said. 

They speed up in the heat of the day, and slow down as they cool at night. 

Glaciers make up an area of land in Alaska nearly equal to the size of West Virginia — but we’re losing them quickly. The state is warming two or three times faster than the global average, and glaciers here have shrunk more — in gigatons per year — than anywhere else since the turn of the century.

As the ice melts, the average global sea level rises. Although this doesn’t directly affect much of Southeast Alaska, where the land is rising faster than the sea as it sheds the weight of glaciers. That’s called isostatic rebound, and it’s one reason why rising seas won’t lap up to every coastal community the same way. 

Riverman said it’s challenging to predict and quantify the extent to which melting glaciers cause sea level rise.

“So we know that glaciers are changing, we know that the ocean is changing, but how those two impact each other is kind of the edge of the field still, and that’s a problem” because low-lying areas by the sea will get hit hard and that will impact millions of people worldwide, Riverman said. Alaska’s glacial meltwater has already contributed significantly to sea level rise, and scientists predict that will continue. 

To understand what’s happening under the ice, Riverman and her team ski out onto the Juneau icefield every summer and put out seismometers that measure vibrations. 

They strike the ice surface with a sledgehammer or shoot it with blank shotgun shells.

“We use those miniature earthquakes to study how thick the ice is and what materials sit underneath,” she said.

She also uses radar to pinpoint where pockets of water have formed, since water lubricates the ice and makes it flow faster. 

Other scientists look at glacier mass, a measure of how much glacier matter there is. Louis Sass is part of the oldest study of glacier mass in North America as a glaciologist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Alaska Science Center. It’s called the Benchmark Glacier Project, and it started tracking a few of Alaska’s glaciers — Lemon Creek in Juneau, Wolverine on the Kenai Peninsula and Gulkana in the Alaska Range — in the 1950s and 60s.

Back then, Sass said, it wasn’t clear whether Alaska’s glaciers were retreating continuously, or if they had just retreated some after the Little Ice Age and then stabilized. 

“People didn’t really know what was happening, because people hadn’t paid really close attention,” Sass said. “There were just very few glaciers that had any sort of picture record or enough data.”

Sass and his team venture out to the same survey sites each spring and fall to calculate the change in mass. They dig pits into the snow or take cores and weigh it. Then they drill long stakes down into the glacier to measure the levels of snow and ice. This is all very similar to what was done back in the 1960s, Sass said.

But now, using satellite imagery, they calibrate that data with the elevation changes of those survey sites as they slide down toward the ocean — since ice melts faster at lower, hotter elevations. The sliding poses a research challenge, Sass said. 

On Wolverine Glacier in the Kenai Mountains, “a sinkhole opened up, and that section of the glacier just sort of disintegrated, and the ice beyond it all melted away” so they lost the survey site stationed there, Sass said. “We’ve had to replace sites that have disappeared on all the glaciers now, as they melted out — and it’s changing so much faster.”

Rapid melting has created a relatively new problem for people who live in the path of the freezing water’s path: glacial outburst floods. 

In Juneau, Suicide Basin is a pool contained in steep rock and dammed by Mendenhall Glacier. During the summer, the pool fills with meltwater and puts pressure on the ice dam until it suddenly breaks and drains into Mendenhall Lake, which then floods parts of the neighborhood in the surrounding valley. 

Jamie Pierce is a hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey who monitors Suicide Basin. 

Equipment stationed in Mendenhall Lake shows Pierce early warning signs when a flood is coming. 

“Water temperature will plummet, that’s a big one,” he said. “Then, of course, the lake stage will start rising precipitously.”

One summer day in late June of 2018, when he was setting up some monitoring gear in Suicide Basin, he thought he was witnessing the dam break in real-time. Bubbles started to rise up to the water’s surface among floating icebergs. It was noisy — crackling and popping. 

“And then all of a sudden, a massive iceberg started to overturn, and it kind of set off a chain reaction,” Pierce said.

The glacier calved off a chunk of ice roughly 100 feet deep and 200 feet long. Pierce and his colleagues thought it was going to trigger the big release. It didn’t, but it showed the huge scale of change the glacier is going through, and meant that the ice dam went quite deep. 

Major questions remain about Alaska’s glaciers. How long will they last? How big can glacial outburst floods get? And what will happen when the ice is gone?

Researchers are chasing answers to help Alaskans navigate a rapidly changing relationship with ice.

A rockslide near Ketchikan on Thursday morning has blocked the island’s main road, leaving people who live north of the slide cut off from the city and its airport. It’s not clear when the road will be open again, but city and borough officials are urging residents to make plans for an extended closure.

“We understand how frustrating it is,” said Alaska Department of Transportation spokesman Sam Dapcevich. “It’s divided the community literally, and we’re hoping to get it reopened as soon as possible, so that people can get where they need to go.”

The slide came down at 10:55 a.m. near Wolfe Point just north of the airport ferry terminal, completely blocking Tongass Avenue. SECON, a construction company contracted by the Transportation Department, has been doing blasting in recent days along the hillside where the slide occurred as part of a hazard mitigation project to improve the slope’s stability.

Dapcevich said it’s too early to say if that caused the slide.

“I do know that the construction work at that area was to mitigate the hazards that already existed. So there’s been rock slides there in the past, and that’s why they’re working there,” Dapcevich said.

SECON spokeswoman Marianne Kordowski directed questions to the  Transportation Department.

City and borough officials said in a press release that they can’t begin clearing the road until state landslide experts can assess the stability of the hillside. They are expected to arrive around 5p.m. Thursday evening.

But Dapcevich said Department of Transportation geological engineers have already begun the assessment while they’re in transit.

“They just want to make sure that the risk is low of more material coming down before they start sending people in there,” he said.

For now, Allen Marine Tours is shuttling trapped residents across the slide area with a tour boat, which is going back and forth between Taquan on the south side of the slide to The Ketch on the north side. To use the free service, call 907-228-4635.

There are two fire stations north of the slide, but the island’s only hospital is south of the slide. Officials say they have a workaround in place to transport hospital patients across the slide zone.

Borough transit services are suspended for areas north of the slide.

The state Department of Transportation wrote on social media that the slide location is “complex and unsafe,” but that they would work to clear a single lane for emergency vehicles once geologists give the OK.

The city and borough has launched a joint emergency operations center, similar to last August’s fatal landslide in the White Cliff neighborhood. Emergency responders are currently setting up lights in preparation to work through the night.

On Saturday morning, Tom Morphet – the mayor of Haines, Alaska — played “O Canada” on a trumpet as cars streamed into a parking lot along the Klondike Highway. Temperatures were hovering in the mid-teens as Alaskans and Canadians got ready for a Nordic ski race.

Carmen Gustafson, from White Horse in Yukon Territory, was among them. Decked out in Canadian swag, she said making the trip this year felt more important than ever – despite a burgeoning movement among Canadians to boycott the U.S.

“Our idea was to still come,” Gustafson said. “But we thought we’d wear some flags and be patriotic and just let everybody know that things aren’t really okay right now.”

The Buckwheat International Ski Classic is a themed event that’s been around for decades. The races – a 5K, 10K, 16K and 32K – happen in British Columbia. And the awards ceremony and afterparty are held just across the border, in Skagway.

But the run-up to this year’s event looked a little different. President Donald Trump has called multiple times for the annexation of Canada – conducted by, quote, “economic force.” He’s also sparked a global trade war, in part by imposing 25% tariffs on some Canadian imports. 

The ordeal has led some Canadians to decide against spending money in or visiting the U.S. for the time being. According to a survey of more than 1,500 Canadians by Canadian market research firm Leger, 36% have canceled pre-planned trips to the U.S.

And U.S. Customs and Border Patrol data shows that about 2.2 million travelers crossed land borders from Canada into the U.S. in February of this year – roughly 500,000 fewer than last year, CBC reported this week. That’s the fewest since April of 2022, when some Canadian travel restrictions were still in place after the COVID-19 pandemic.

For months, that’s been top of mind for many in Alaskan border towns, including Jaime Bricker, Skagway’s tourism director.

“We’ve received a lot of correspondence from potential Canadian visitors that have expressed their frustration with the current situation, and that they may not be able to visit Skagway until this has resolved itself,” Bricker said.

The situation has pushed some local government officials to write letters and take other steps, both to show supportfor Canadians and to encourage visits to Alaska amid escalating hostility.

The week before the Buckwheat ski race, organizers said the turmoil might lead fewer Canadians to register or to attend post-race events in Skagway. But roughly the same number of participants – around 270 – registered this year as last year. And nearly 70% were Canadian.

Which means on race day, the parking lot was bustling. Many people arrived dressed to this year’s theme: “creatures of the deep, enchantment of the ski.” Skiers took off from the start dressed as mermaids, jellyfish, sea monsters – and a can of tuna.

Not long after the final skiers started their race, a party at an aid station was in full swing. Music blared as volunteers served burgers and beer from inside a giant snow fort carved with sea creatures.

Whitehorse resident Ghislain de Laplante was busy chasing his kids around the sculpture after he finished the race. But he stopped for a minute to chat. He said Canadians are ‘“right pissed” at the U.S. government.

“The tariffs obviously feel like a slap in the face,” de Laplante said. “And then the talk about annexation and military intervention is absolutely disrespectful and not welcome.”

But de Laplante also noted that nobody at the race seemed to be talking politics at all. He thought that was because people were more interested in unity than antagonism – and that they understand federal policy has little to do with their friends in Alaska.

“We love our American neighbors, which is why this comes as such a shock and an offense,” de Laplante said. “It is an offense.”

Ed Gillis, also a Whitehorse resident, acknowledged the boycott movement, but thought it might pertain more to the Lower 48 than Alaska. He didn’t change his plans to attend Buckwheat this year, as he has for much of the last decade.

“We weren’t going to miss it again this year, just because of everything going on,” Gillis said. “We were saying it’s like a diplomatic mission, we’re coming up to get to see our neighbors and chat and just show support for each other.”

Gillis said he would go to the awards ceremony in Skagway, as he always does.

Later that evening, the emcee announced race winners and other awards to a noisy crowd. Among them was best costume. The prize: a free weekend in a cabin near Skagway, and a helicopter shuttle to get there and back.

This year, the award went to a Whitehorse resident – who raced as a floating island of trash.

Content warning: this story includes details of possible animal abuse that some readers might find disturbing.

The remains of two French bulldogs that went missing on Southeast Alaska’s Prince of Wales Island over a month ago were found in a pair of crab pots on Friday.

The dogs belonged to Prince of Wales residents Esther, Kane, and Shane Martin. According to Kane Martin, the dogs disappeared just before Valentine’s Day. He’d taken them to work at a logging operation near Thorne Bay.

“We take the dogs to work with us every day and they just run back and forth between us while we’re working,” Martin said. “At about 9:30 a.m., we didn’t see them anymore. We figured they just went up and stayed at the pickup but they didn’t. Somebody came by and picked them up.”

Martin said he thinks someone abducted the dogs from Sandy Beach Road near the timber site. They were about a year old.

“They were great little dogs, I mean, just lovable as hell. I’m sure that’s why they just jumped in somebody’s rig with them,” he said.

Martin and his family posted flyers with pictures of the missing dogs – named Whiskey and Yoda. They advertised a $500 reward for their return. After a couple weeks without a lead, they doubled the reward.

About a month later, Alaska Wildlife Troopers were doing routine inspections of shellfish pots around Thorne Bay Harbor. They hauled up two crab pots that each had the remains of a dog in them. Troopers compared photographs and information from the Martins. They identified the dogs as Whiskey and Yoda.

According to Martin, law enforcement dropped the pots back in the water to see if their owner would come back for them, but someone came in the middle of the night and took the pots.

Trooper spokesman Austin McDaniel declined to share more information on the crab pots or their potential owner. He said the case is being investigated and troopers are attempting to corroborate information from potential witnesses before sharing it with the public.

Martin said he is also offering a $2,500 reward for information on the people involved.

“The troopers told me they thought it was something personal. I mean, there’s only one person on this island that has any kind of vendetta against me at all and it’s not even that much that I know of. I mean, I’ve lived here my whole life,” he said.

Anyone with information regarding the disappearance of the bulldogs are encouraged to contact the Prince of Wales Trooper Post at 907-826-2291.

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A half-century ago, Angoon’s harbor was packed with small, family-operated fishing vessels. Salmon and halibut fed mouths and bank accounts.

Peter Duncan, Mayor of Angoon, remembers those days. But it’s not the same anymore. Fisheries limitation regulations have caused “devastating changes,” he said. “You just don’t find a troller in our harbors anymore.” That’s caused his village to depend more on government assistance programs, including food stamps, he said. 

Duncan grew up fishing on his father’s seiner in the small Lingít village on Admiralty Island. He graduated to his own troll boat and commercially fished until the early 1990s, when he said he couldn’t make a living that way anymore.

He said the opening date for the king salmon fishery was pushed later in the season, when most fish had already gone further into the inside waters and up rivers to spawn. Folks weren’t catching enough salmon to make money, so permits became more valuable to sell. 

“A lot of boats, you know, they just sold out, and they, they couldn’t do it anymore, and they’ve tried,” he said. 

Many of those fishing permits left the island, and with them went the means for the village to sustain itself.

“It’s sad to know that at one time, we used to be a strong fishing fleet that took pride in going out and going fishing and making something for ourselves,” Duncan said. 

Duncan’s story isn’t unique. This reality has unfolded in most rural villages throughout the Gulf of Alaska, as first reported by Northern Journal. In part, it’s an unintended consequence of a state law that took effect in 1975, called the Limited Entry Act, which allowed the state to issue a set number of permits for each fishery. The goal was to address a sustainability problem. At the time, salmon populations were plummeting while commercial fishermen multiplied. The idea was simply to cap the number of people fishing, so there would be enough to go around. 

But that’s not what happened in Native villages. Courtney Carothers, an environmental anthropologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, led a survey of 3,024 Sealaska Corporation shareholders and descendants about the community impacts of fisheries limitation policies. 

She found that Sealaska villages owned half as many fishing vessels in 2019 than they owned in 1978, and held 38% fewer commercial salmon permits than they held in 1975. 

“This is not good public policy if our communities in the Gulf of Alaska — surrounded by the ocean with thousands of years of fishing knowledge and history — within one generation, are cut out,” Carothers said. “I mean, this is an absolute crisis.”

Joe Nelson is interim President of Sealaska Corp., representing Lingít, Haida and Tsimshian interests in Southeast Alaska. His airy corner office in downtown Juneau looks out over Gastineau Channel. On a recent afternoon, clouds trundled into the snowy peaks of Douglas Island. Glossy magazine copies of Carothers’ study were spread out on a table.

The report points to a loss of fishing access as one of the main reasons people leave their rural villages. Nelson has watched this happen. 

“It’s all been going one way, and that’s migration out of most of the fleet and most of the permits,” Nelson said. 

That’s caused families to leave and village populations to dwindle, he said, which in turn leads to schools and other services closing down. And those who stay behind are aging out of the industry without enough young people to pick it up, he said.

“So the whole economy just shrinks. It’s much bigger than a single fisherman that decides not to show up anymore,” Nelson said. 

He’s calling for the state to adjust the limited entry system so that native communities can fish commercially “without going bankrupt.”

Today, a seine permit in Southeast is worth about $140,000 and a drift permit is worth about $44,000 for the salmon fisheries, according to Reid Johnson, the research and planning project leader at Alaska’s Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission. Those numbers vary, depending on how well a fishery is doing.

Johnson says that while the Limited Entry Act helped make Alaska’s fisheries more sustainable, it created this new problem for rural villages. Now, the Commission is talking internally about potential solutions.

“There have been ideas that have been floated, such as making it administratively easier to transfer a permit to another rural resident in the same area that you live in,” Johnson said. 

Carothers suggests there could be room for creating a new class of permit, such as an entry-level or small-scale permit, to get people started. But any such changes would have to come through the state Legislature. 

There’s also a potential federal pathway for guaranteeing Indigenous fishing access, which was not compensated for through the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act that distributed roughly 45 million acres and $1 billion to tribes in 1971.

“That act preceded any limitation of fisheries, and there was compensation for land, but not for fish,” Carothers said. “So I personally think there should be a repatriation of rights, because they’ve been taken away, dispossessed, in ways that I don’t think were fair.”

Sealaska is not advocating for specific policy changes just yet. Nelson says there must be open, public discussions that look at a slew of ideas for how to restore fishing access to Native villages. But first, he wants state officials to recognize that there is a problem.