Travelers can now schedule ferry rides with the Alaska Marine Highway System for May through September. That’s after the summer schedule opened for booking Feb. 12.         

The schedule looks a lot like recent years, with six of the state’s nine vessels sailing. There is not enough funding or staffing to run them all, said Shannon McCarthy, spokesperson for the state Department of Transportation.

“Our crew is relatively stable right now, but, you know, it’s not expanding rapidly,” McCarthy said. “Our budget is also a concern this year, so we will only be running one of the mainliners at any given time.”

Only one mainliner – the Columbia – is scheduled to travel weekly through Southeast to Bellingham, Washington. That means a round trip every two weeks for most residents.

McCarthy said the Kennicott will be on standby in case the Columbia needs repairs.

“The nice thing is, it is much better to have two vessels — main liners — that are able to be sailed at any point,” she said. “It puts the state in a much better position.”

The Tustumena will sail the southwest region between Homer and the Aleutians. That’s roughly two round trips per week from Homer to Kodiak, and one full Aleutian Chain run per month.

The day boat, Leconte will sail Prince William Sound. And Lynn Canal will be similar to last year, with the Hubbard doing nearly daily runs between Juneau, Haines, and Skagway.

U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski helped secure hundreds of millions in federal ferry funds over the last five years. But the state is now waiting on a key federal grant for this year. DOT Commissioner Ryan Anderson is scheduled to be in DC this week to talk to the Alaska Delegation about it.

“Because this money is still available — it was written into the law,” McCarthy said. “So, we’re just trying to figure that out, to see if there is some relief there.”

With ongoing funding issues, the state is considering selling the Matanuska, a 63-year-old mainliner that’s been tied up in Ketchikan and used for housing new ferry workers. McCarthy says they’ll still be able to offer housing in the mainliner that’s not currently sailing.

Most of Southeast Alaska avoided hurricane-force winds Friday but 70-mile-an-hour gusts were recorded at Southern Admiralty Island. Sitka missed the worst of the storm as it passed south of the town.

Bud Durdle lives in Port Alexander, a remote fishing village on the southern tip of Baranof Island.

“No damage here yet that I have heard of, and usually I hear because people want me to fix it,” Durdle said. “I don’t think we’ve lost any trees yet. They’re used to it, you know? I mean, this is unusual but not that unusual.”

He said wind started to build around 10:00 a.m. and blew upwards of 40 knots by 3:00 p.m. The bay his house looks out on was “solid white” with whitecaps. Durdle said he’s the city’s “maintenance guy” but so far, the storm hasn’t created any new work for him.

Further to the south, on the western side of Prince of Wales Island, in Klawock, the city’s water treatment plant was hit by lightning. A representative of the city of about 700 people said it knocked out the plant’s automated system, and they’re manually adjusting and backwashing the water. The city is working to resolve the issue with Anchorage-based Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium.

Just south in Craig, an employee at city hall said it’s been very windy but hasn’t noticed any damaged buildings or downed trees. About an hour south, in Hydaburg, a city employee said most of the heavy winds were seen Thursday night.

Around noon, the weather service forecasted gusts up to 90 knots in Port Protection, but it didn’t materialize.

Ben Houdek lives in a cabin in Port Protection, a small community on the northern tip of Prince of Wales Island where big bodies of water converge by Sumner Straight. He said it’s a “notoriously bad weather spot” but this storm forecast was exceptionally bad. He and his neighbors braced for sustained winds forecasted up to 50 knots.

As of about 3 p.m. Houdeck hadn’t heard of any catastrophic damage in the community. And while so far, so good, he described a “quiet anxiety” for him and his neighbors, waiting and wondering if a gust would last long enough to knock down trees or cause a boat to break free.

He said the surge was building all day, with big gusts of wind every 10 minutes or so, and the tide coming up higher than it should be. Through the rain on his windows, he could see whitecaps all around in the bay, trees whipping around and boats pulling hard on their lines. 

“It’s intense. It’s a disconcerting feeling when they pound,” Houdeck said. And it’s also kind of cool. I mean, it’s exciting, and it’s cool to sit, sip your coffee by the wood stove at the window and feel like you’re having an adventure just watching the wind blow and the waves crash but still on edge, sitting in your living room with your extra tufts on, ready to run outside and deal with whatever might come down in the storm.

He said, “hopefully we just get to watch the waves crash and then it dissipates, and call our neighbors and make sure everybody’s house is fine and there ya go.”

Houdek said it’s a little strange to have such an intense storm in September. And the National Weather Service in Juneau agrees, telling folks it’s not typical for this time of year. “This system is definitely not typical for this time of year or just in general for this area … this is a lot stronger than what we would typically see,” the service said in a noon update.

Around the same time, lightning struck about 10 miles from Wrangell Harbor, according to the Emergency Alert System. The broadcast message told all mariners to find safe harbor.

Harbor Master Steve Miller said it didn’t affect the town’s harbors, but he has staff watching the boats at the three harbors until 11 p.m. Friday. They’re looking for bad tie-up lines and vessels submerged low in the water, plus infrastructure in the ports and harbors. Though Wrangell experienced wind gusts nearing 50 mph, he said five miles out at Shoemaker Harbor, the wind barely blew.

“It’s kind of weird that it really blew here in town at our harbor,” Miller said. “But Shoemaker was a little blustery, but it wasn’t like the, you know, 40 plus mile an hour gusts were getting in town here.

There is a high wind warning in effect until 10 p.m. Friday for Wrangell and Petersburg, and 7 p.m. for communities on Baranof and Prince of Wales Islands.

Thunderstorms are expected Friday evening in Ketchikan, with the strongest winds hitting earlier in the day. Greg Karlik, Ketchikan’s assistant fire chief, urges people to stay indoors in the event of thunderstorms.

“You definitely want to be inside for that,” he said. “As far as your household items go, everything should be on surge protectors, if at all possible, or unplug them if for possible, if lightning strikes.”

The weather service suspects seas in the Gulf of Alaska reached 32 to 35 feet Friday, but they’re still collecting data from buoys in the region.

Southeast Alaska’s annual economic conference is taking place in Sitka this week. For three days, people from around the region will explore economic drivers like tourism and the seafood industry. One of the sessions on Tuesday looked at economic factors like jobs, wages, and business challenges. The region has seen steady job growth over the last five years, but the workforce isn’t keeping up.

The problem points to a demographic shift, according to Meilani Schijvens, owner of the Juneau-based research and consulting firm, Rain Coast Data. She presented at the conference.

“Our number one economic problem is declining younger people,” she said.

Most of the region’s jobs are in the government sector including federal, state, local, and tribal. That’s followed by tourism, healthcare, and then seafood.

But there aren’t enough young people to fill the jobs. The region is aging – in Petersburg, seniors 65 and older make up a quarter of the population.

Schijvens said the region lost 7,700 kids and working age residents in the last decade.

“For Southeast Alaska to prosper in the future, we must focus on attracting and retaining a vibrant future population now,” she said.

Retention is a major issue. Last year, more people moved out of Juneau than moved in. Wrangell lost nearly 30% of its workforce over the last 10 years.

The top three reasons young people leave? Lack of affordable housing, the high cost of living, and lack of affordable childcare – in that order. The average price of a home in Juneau is $503, 354, and in Sitka it’s $485, 334.

Schijvens said the region’s demographics aren’t expected to change in the coming years.

“We’ve mapped it out, you know 25 years, and we still have a region without the young people and the workforce that we need,” Schijvens said. “So, the only way out of this issue is to build, build, build housing.”

The Southeast Conference continues in Sitka through Thursday.

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 (AMHS) 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 they’re 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, Governor 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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This winter’s ferry schedule is again impacted by an old fleet needing maintenance. One ferry will be designated for Southeast’s main line route, stopping in eight communities from Skagway to Bellingham, Washington. The round trip takes about a week.

There will be no mainline service Dec. 1-11 when the Columbia replaces the Kennicott. The 50-year-old Columbia has been in maintenance all summer. The much younger Kennicott will go in for service to replace its generators.

The work will take nearly a year, according to Alaska Department of Transportation spokesperson Sam Dapcevich.

“When it goes offline, it goes into a federal project to replace its generators, which has to do with emissions and efficiency,” he said. So that’s going to be a long project. It’ll be out for about 11 months. So, the Columbia will be the mainliner all the way up until next winter.”

Communities off the main route, like Sitka, will see one ferry a week going either north or south. In other words, it would be a nine-day round trip from Sitka to Juneau.

That’s a far cry from how it used to be with twice-a-week service, according to Melissa Wileman who works for the City and Borough of Sitka.

“It’s our highway within Southeast Alaska, and that’s what folks aren’t understanding,” she said.

Residents used to ferry their vehicles to Costco in Juneau for supplies that Sitka doesn’t have, Wileman said.

“The highway is–was–the Alaska Marine Highway System for quite some time and ferrying back and forth between our little communities. And that opportunity is dwindling. . . and dwindled,” she said.

Sitka is one of Alaska’s larger communities, with a population of over 8,000. It’s on Baranof Island where Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium or SEARHC is building a new hospital. Wileman said the recent marine highway schedules restrict access to healthcare.

“With Sitka poised to become the SEARHC hub soon, there’s a clear opportunity for the ferry system to increase the ridership here and to help assist with those transportation needs for those folks from smaller communities to Sitka,” Wileman said.

One of those communities is Kake, located south of Sitka on another island. Kake can’t get to Sitka via ferry, at least not directly. Residents will see one round trip to Juneau per month this winter. Kake doesn’t have jet service, only small planes. However, resident Robin Ross said that tickets for small planes are more expensive than ferries, and they don’t run in bad weather.

“You know how the weather is in Southeast,” Ross said. “Sometimes the weather’s out for two, three days, from snow, fog, no planes, and we have people waiting for meds. “[They] miss their very important hospital appointments too because of the weather in the wintertime.”

Ross grew up in Kake and now works at the school. She said she sees students missing events because they can’t travel, which wasn’t a problem when she was in high school 20 years ago.

“We were able to go on all our trips, ferry to ferry, staying in the budget, and it was a lot cheaper,” said Ross. “Now it’s really hard to get out anywhere. Just to get our kids out for cross country, our high school for regionals, it’s going to cost us 12k.”

In past decades, two ports connected Alaska to the Lower 48 – Bellingham, Washington and Prince Rupert, British Columbia. However, the Prince Rupert port has been off-limits for five years because of disputes between Alaska and Canada.

Dapcevich said the state’s marine highway system plans to reconnect with Prince Rupert, but they don’t have a timeline yet. The dock needs to be fixed first, he said.

“There are international issues regarding how funding can be spent for those projects that have to be reconciled between the two countries,” Dapcevich said. “And it has to do with, whether we purchase U.S. steel for the project or Canadian steel, and it gets a little bit complicated there.”

The 60-year-old Tustumena will be offline for three months of maintenance beginning Jan. 1. So, there will be no service for Kodiak, Homer, and the Aleutians in southwest Alaska during that time. The LeConte goes offline Oct. 1 through April 1 for an overhaul and the Hubbard will cover the Northern Panhandle communities during that time.

Sitka continued to experience a wide internet and cell service outage Friday. Nearly all Sitkans use GCI for both services, but that went out Thursday shortly after 11 a.m. On Friday, GCI said in a statement posted to social media that they are investigating a break in a subsea fiber optic cable. 

The company said technicians were working to temporarily reroute Sitka’s internet traffic with hopes to restore basic voice and text service and limited internet sometime Friday. 

Emergency services are still available. The Sitka Police Department announced that it is still receiving 911 calls from both landlines and cell phones. Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center’s emergency room is still open, and they are accepting local patients but are diverting other communities from sending in patients until internet access is restored. 

Tricia Bruckbauer is a spokesperson for Alaska Airlines. In an interview with KCAW, she said that all Alaska Airlines regularly scheduled flights are operating normally. The airline flew in an IT tech Friday morning to restore some internet access for their local site by installing Starlink, which is satellite internet. Before Starlink was installed, they were able to check in passengers in Sitka this/Friday morning through the Juneau station. 

A representative from the Sitka Trial Court told KCAW that they cannot access online filings, which is slowing things down, but as of Friday, they were still holding court proceedings as scheduled. 

The last time Sitka experienced a major internet outage was in 2016. At the time, KCAW reported that service was impacted for 12 days due to a damaged fiber optic cable. In its statement on Friday, GCI did not confirm where the current break is located or how it occurred. 

UPDATED: 11:25 a.m.

Most internet and cell services remain down in Sitka – the outage started Thursday morning shortly after 11 a.m.

Sitkans who contacted the GCI customer service line to report the widespread outage got a message that QUOTE “GCI is aware of the outage that is affecting internet and TV service within the O’Malley area in Anchorage and Sitka.”

Sitka had 4,000 cruise passengers on Thursday. Many businesses said they had to resort to cash-only transactions to make sales. 

Around 2 p.m. on Thursday, the lights were on at the AT&T store in downtown Sitka, but the door was locked, and a sign on the door read “Network down, No ETA.”

But not every network is down. Melissa Wileman is the public and government affairs director at Sitka City Hall. She said the city is using Starlink as a backup internet provider, and it’s working right now. 

Wileman said the city got some information about the outage from GCI after their IT Director reached out. She said they’re working as hard as possible to get things back up and running. 

Sitka’s internet outage is impacting local medical services. The regional healthcare provider, Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium, announced that until internet service is restored, Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center is canceling elective surgeries. SEARHC is also diverting emergency patients from outside communities for the time being. The emergency room, however, remains open to Sitkans in need of emergency services. Urgent Care is open, and primary care patients can attend their appointments. SEARHC anticipates appointments will take longer than usual due to the outage, and only urgent prescriptions will be filled. 

The last time Sitka experienced a major internet outage was in 2016. At the time, KCAW reported that service was impacted for 12 days due to a damaged fiber optic cable at the bottom of the sea floor. So far, the reason for this outage is unclear.

The GCI outage has affected KCAW’s streaming service and broadcasting to KCAW’s translator communities as well. 

KCAW’s streaming is temporarily down and broadcasting to KCAW’s translator communities as well. “GCI is aware of the outage that is affecting internet and TV service within the O’Malley area in Anchorage and Sitka,” GCI said in a statement.

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Peter Westley grew up fishing for salmon in Prince William Sound.

“Some of my fondest memories are actually spending time fishing in front of Wally Noerenberg Hatchery and other things, ” Westley said. “So, I’ve been tied to hatcheries in one way or another for a really long time.”

Now, Westley is a salmon researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks looking at how hatchery and wild fish interact. He’s one of a dozen authors of a study focusing on years of data on pink salmon hatcheries in Prince William Sound. It was funded through universities in Alaska, Washington, and Oregon through the Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean and Ecosystem Studies (CICOES) and supported by hatchery operators, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and nonprofit science groups. They all want to know more about salmon. So, Westley and the other researchers combined their data and their questions.

“What are some of the potential trade-offs regarding the use of hatchery fish as a part of the fabric of Alaska’s fisheries?” Westley said.

Salmon hatcheries are a huge part of Alaska’s fishing economy.  Over two dozen of them provide harvests for thousands of commercial fishermen and are worth over half a billion dollars each year. The state owns some of the hatcheries, which are mostly managed by private nonprofits. They carefully rear salmon from eggs and then release the fry at specific sites along the coast. Their hatchery stocks originally came from wild local fish runs.

But what happens when the hatchery fish join the wild stocks? They’re known as “strays”.

“Individuals that are showing up to the wild population, interbreeding with those wild fish,” explained Samuel May, another author of the study.

May is a research geneticist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and worked with the University of Alaska Fairbanks on modeling for the study. He and the other researchers found that some hatchery salmon are straying from their groups and mixing with wild stocks. They’re traveling with the wild salmon to spawning grounds and creating a larger overall population but at the same time, potentially changing the traits of the wild fish.

May said there aren’t many stray hatchery pinks – roughly 1-5% of the population — but that could still make a difference, especially in streams with just a small run of wild fish.

And that’s because of run timing, a trait that’s deeply ingrained in the salmons’ genetics.

“Pink salmon, in particular, probably [have] the strictest timing of all of the different salmon species,” May said. “They have this really strict two-year life cycle and they actually return to the stream in which they were born within just a few days generally of when their parents returned.”

Hatcheries release juvenile salmon at different times and locations than nearby wild runs to keep the stocks separate. But some still mix, May said. This can cause wild populations to increase, which could be a good thing for harvesters, but the hatchery fish can also cause the wild stocks to change the timing of their routine. And timing is everything. Wild salmon have evolved to return during the best temperatures and food availability for their juveniles when they hatch.

“[Strays] can end up pulling the wild population off of that optimum and changing the dynamics of the wild system,” May said. “And the fear is that this is going to reduce the populations productivity or resilience to future changes.”

Conditions change from stream to stream. And specific salmon runs have adapted to them for thousands of years.

“So, if that timing changes just a little bit, then the population as a whole could be at risk of kind of missing the ideal optimal, or the ideal environmental conditions that they need in order to go on and produce that next generation,” May said.

As for why salmon occasionally stray? That’s unknown and would take more research. Yet, Westley said what they’ve learned from this study is still important – that some hatchery and wild salmon mix and create larger populations, which can be a good thing, but it can also potentially change those wild stocks – forever.

“It is a blessing and a curse, double-edged sword, whatever you want to call it,” Westley said.

The authors say this hatchery pinks study doesn’t end here. The methods can also be used for hatchery chum salmon in Southeast, which is another multi-million dollar industry in Alaska’s fisheries.

The Alaska Marine Highway System’s proposed winter ferry schedule has just one ferry serving Southeast Alaska’s main route – sailing north to south once a week through the inner channels from Skagway to Bellingham, Washington. It’s a similar schedule to last year’s and it leaves some communities out.

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Kake’s 550 residents live on the northwest side of Kupreanof Island. The proposed winter ferry schedule would have a ferry stop in Kake just once a month.

“It’s the same as what it has been for several years for us. No service to Kake, basically,” said Llyod Davis, mayor of Kake.

Davis was speaking at a June 26 virtual meeting for the state’s Department of Transportation about the proposed schedule.

“For our elders that struggle to get up climb on and off a plane, sometimes they just, they miss their appointments,” said Davis. “They miss these trips and whatnot because they’re gonna wait for that ferry because they can’t get on and off on those planes and the high costs we pay to fly around out of Kake.”

Southeast Alaska residents relied on ferries for transportation for decades. Throughout the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s multiple mainline ferries sailed the region. But the service has been dramatically scaled back with an aging, high-maintenance fleet and short staffing. And flying isn’t an easy alternative.

“Flights to and from our community are very expensive,” said Anji Gallanos, Kake’s superintendent and principal.

Ferries used to be the first choice to transport students to and from regional events. But Gallanos testified that the school district had to budget $130,000 next year for travel by plane, even in tight budget times.

“We rely on the ferry system to help our students and encourage our students to participate in sports and student activities which are critical for their development and for their learning,” Gallanos said. “So, we’re just advocating and imploring the ferry service to please include more than a one-time monthly service to Kake.”

Sitka is also off the beaten path when it comes to ferry service. Located on the outer shores of Baranof Island, it’s scheduled to get one ferry stop per week, either north or south.

Melissa Wileman is with Sitka’s municipal government. In the past, Sitkans used ferries to bring bulk items back from Juneau. Now, she said she feels like a broken record, constantly advocating for more service.

“I’m really frustrated this year with the lack of ferries northbound,” Wileman said. “It’s pretty devastating to our community, not being able to, you know, get to Juneau the expenses here and Sitka, are astronomical, and it’s really hurting our community.”

In the northern part of the region, Yakutat hasn’t had enough ferries in recent years, according to Police Chief John Waldron. That trend is expected to continue – Yakutat is not on the schedule this coming winter. With limited local options, Waldron said they need ferries to get their vehicles serviced – barging a truck costs upwards of $5,000 one way.

“I just would love to see the Kennicott, even if it’s once a month, stopping in Yakutat on the northbound and then the opposite month coming down and stopping in southbound,” Waldron said. “Even if it’s you know, once or twice, it gives us some ability to get some vehicles in and out.”

Some Southeast residents who testified at the public hearing proposed changes to the ferry schedule, like adding additional stops in Kake, Sitka and Yakutat.  State ferry representatives say they are considering those comments and plan to have a completed winter schedule by the end of July.