Steve Ramp coordinates the Women’s Pistol League. The 10th annual league begins 7 p.m. Wednesday, September 4, with signups, orientation, and practice shooting, followed by the first competitive session 6 p.m. Sunday, September 8, and every Sunday evening thereafter through the fall for the next 10 weeks. Beginners are welcome, and one-on-one coaching is available. Participants, with some exceptions, must be 16 and older. (Younger shooters may participate with direct parental supervision, on approval from the league coordinator.)

The Sitka Advisory Committee is seeking volunteers to help represent local concerns to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The trapping, resident sport fishing, processor, and alternate seats are all up for re-election at Wednesday’s (1-20-21) meeting. KCAW’s Erin Fulton spoke with committee members Heather Bauscher and Steve Ramp about the Sitka AC and how the public can get involved.

The Sitka Advisory Committee will meet on Wednesday, January 20, 2021 at 6:00 p.m. via Zoom. Information on how to attend the meeting is available here.

Sitka’s local Fish & Game Advisory Committee adopted a pair of resolutions at its last regular meeting (11-13-19) — on climate change and the Roadless Rule.

The votes — both unanimous — were a significant departure for the group, which usually deals in routine matters of fishing and hunting —  and came in response to advocacy by Sitka students.

The Sitka Advisory Committee — or “AC” as it’s known — is one of 84 similar Fish & Game committees throughout the state. Its primary purpose is to advise the Department of Fish & Game on matters relevant to well… fish and game. Usually this means sifting through dozens of allocation and harvest proposals bound for the state’s two major wildlife governing boards — that would be the Board of Fish and the Board of Game.

But at the November meeting of the Sitka AC — instead of hearing crusty fishermen argue for an increased harvest limit, or a change in an area boundary, the committee took testimony from Robin Masterman, a Mt. Edgecumbe high school student from Togiak, in Bristol Bay. Masterman explained how climate change was affecting her family’s way of life. She gave several examples, like this one:

“My grandparents, and a bunch of my aunts and uncles rely on the berries that we pick on the tundra for food,” said Masterman, “but in the past few years there haven’t been as many berries growing because there’s not enough runoff from the mountains, which comes from the snow in the winter.”

Masterman was one of several students present from the Mt. Edgecumbe Environmental Group who urged the Sitka AC to adopt a resolution in support of recent action by the Alaska Federation of Natives declaring a climate emergency. Another of her classmates spoke about last summer’s two-week stretch in Tok when temperatures climbed to 90 degrees.

The Mt. Edgecumbe students were backed by Sitka High’s climate action group. One of their representatives, sophomore Darby Osborne, also spoke.

“Even in Sitka we’ve been seeing the changes,” Osborne explained. “Alaska as a whole is warming at twice the rate of other countries. And even in my short time living in Sitka I’ve seen the winters disappearing. I remember growing up and having it snow on my birthday, and that simply doesn’t happen anymore.”

Osborne said that climate change had been politicized, and  that it was time to move past that debate, accept the science, and initiate drastic action.

But did that argument really apply to the Sitka Advisory Committee? Osborne suggested that it did.

“The future and sustainability of our planet is what we should put before anything else,” she said.

The presence of the students at the AC meeting wasn’t a total surprise. Longtime AC member Eric Jordan, a commercial salmon troller based in Sitka, had been working on his own draft resolution to present to the committee. Coordinating with the student activists struck him as a reasonable approach.

“From the loss of (sea)birds, to the loss of feed fish, to the warming temperatures that we’re seeing as we travel around,” Jordan said, “to every time we look at the ice fields back here, we have a dramatic climate… well, the word in these resolutions is ‘emergency.’”

Other members agreed, and most of the remaining work was to figure out how to merge the student’s ideas with Jordan’s draft.

There was little discussion on whether climate change fell within the purview of the Sitka AC. Member Steve Ramp said he called board support in Juneau to double-check, and was given the go-ahead.

“One purpose of our committee is to provide a local forum for fish and wildlife conservation issues, including matters related to habitat,” Ramp said. “And this is right in there. So, I’m fully in support of us taking this up.”

The AC’s interests in habitat came into play again later in the evening, when the committee considered a second resolution — this one all its own: To support the “No Action” alternative of Alaska’s proposed exemption from the 2001 US Forest Service Roadless Rule. The 3-page document is a litany of reasons why opening the last remaining areas of old growth forest in the Tongass is harmful to to the way of life in Southeast Alaska, and is actively opposed by a large majority of residents.

As with the climate emergency resolution, there was little debate about whether the state Fish & Game Advisory Committee had the right to chime in on a federal policy. Member Eric Jordan again pointed out that the AC had long felt an obligation to take positions on policy matters — state or federal — if those matters had an impact on the areas wildlife resources.

The Roadless resolution also passed unanimously. Jordan commended his fellow members.

“I served with Larry Calvin, Moe Johnson Sr.,” said Jordan, “and a lot of other people — Richard Nelson, who just passed — who were on this committee who really fought to protect the environment. They would have been so proud to have been part of this committee, and us working together on these issues.”

The Sitka AC is comprised of 17 members. It is non-partisan.

A helicopter from Air Station Sitka safely rescued all five crew members of a fishing boat, which sank just south of Baranof Island early Tuesday morning (5-7-19).

The Coast Guard credits the high level of preparedness of the fishermen aboard the 70-foot longliner Masonic for the successful outcome of the incident.  They had conducted survival drills — and had a compulsory safety inspection — just hours before their vessel went down.

The Coast Guard received a single “mayday” radio call from the Masonic at about 2:30 a.m. on May 7. Further attempts to reach the Masonic by radio were unsuccessful.

But the vessel was equipped with an “Automatic Identification System” — or AIS — which allowed the Coast Guard to pinpoint its position a few miles south of Cape Decision, about 80 miles from Sitka on the southernmost end of Kiuiu  Island.

Video: Air Station Sitka rescues five from the F/V Masonic, 5-7-19

It’s a required item of equipment on larger boats (over 65 feet) that fish more than three miles offshore, even if they’re not the newest boats in the fleet.

“I felt very bad about the boat. It’s a 1923 wood-hulled old halibut schooner,” said Steve Ramp, the Coast Guard’s commercial fishing vessel safety examiner in Sitka. “Nice, pretty lines on it. It’s well-maintained by the owner. And I feel terrible that the boat encountered this problem, but I feel pretty good that what I do contributed to a safe outcome, by getting the people home safe.”

Ramp had been on board the Masonic that very morning, for a final inspection of the safety equipment on the Masonic — including verifying that the Automatic Identification System was working. Again, it’s a compulsory inspection for larger fishing vessels that work offshore — but it’s not punitive. Ramp gave the Masonic an initial inspection two weeks ago, generated a work list for a few things that needed to be corrected, and issued a Coast Guard decal Monday morning shortly before the vessel departed on its fateful trip.

A helicopter from Air Station Sitka and the cutter Anacapa from Petersburg both responded to the last known location of the Masonic, as reported by the AIS. The cruise ship Oosterdam also diverted to aid in the search. The helicopter located the vessel at 4 a.m. Tuesday in the vicinity of Coronation Island, where it had gone aground.

The five crew members were in a life raft tethered to the stern of the Masonic. All were wearing cold water immersion suits.

Ramp says the crew had practiced putting on the awkward, gumby suits just prior to his inspection, including a new member of the crew for whom this was the first voyage.

“There’s two kinds of people I encounter in exams,” Ramp explained. “Some of them have been in a situation where they had to go in the water, and they believe 100-percent in those survival suit drills, doing them every month. Fire drills, and everything else. And there’s other people for whom nothing bad has ever happened, so they don’t think they’re (drills) are as important. Our program instills in them a legal importance — if not a moral importance — to do the drills and make sure they and their crew are well-trained to deal with emergencies.”

And that well-prepared boat, says Ramp, was the Masonic. The Air Station Sitka helicopter hoisted all five crew members aboard and returned them to Sitka uninjured.

In addition to longlining, the Masonic is permitted as a power troller for salmon. It’s homeported in Sitka and registered to William C. Lewis.

The Coast Guard Marine Safety Detachment is monitoring the sight of the grounded vessel for pollution. The cause of the incident is under investigation. As of press time, Hanson Maritime of Sitka was en route to the location to assess the Masonic for possible salvage.

Participant Andrea Turner practices dry firing her pistol at the women’s pistol clinic, a 4-week course offered by the Sitka Sportsmen’s Association. (Photo/KCAW/Katherine Rose)

While it’s no secret that there’s a sizable gun-owning community in Sitka, it also happens to be co-ed. At the Sitka Sportsmen’s Association indoor shooting range, the fastest-growing user demographic is female. KCAW’s Katherine Rose reports on a new pistol clinic tailored especially for women.

Downloadable Audio

Good evening shooters. We’re going to start with live fire warm-up. We’re going to do it in five round increments, so go ahead and load your magazines with 5 rounds.

I’m standing at the back of an indoor gun range, looking over the shoulders of eight women as they stare down the dimly lit blue tunnel toward targets made out of old fish boxes, and wait for the signal.

Ready on the firing line. Commence fire

Using anywhere from .22 to .40 caliber pistols, these women practice shooting. Some with little experience; some with quite a bit. Steve Ramp, of the Sitka Sportsmen’s Association, leads the course, and said after three years of a women’s pistol league in the fall, women were asking for more opportunities to shoot.

“In December, several of the shooters approached me and said ‘We don’t want to wait until next September to shoot again. Can you do something in the meantime?”

So they created the “Women’s Pistol Clinic,” a four-week course designed to teach women the basics of how to use a firearm, from gun safety to tricks that improve aim and accuracy.

“My goal is to make the opportunity for women to get involved in shooting sports, that they wouldn’t have otherwise,” Ramp says. “Because I think we need more women involved.”

Why? Ramp says gun ranges haven’t felt the most welcoming to women in the past.

“It might be sexist, but it’s always been a guy thing to go out and shoot guns,” Ramp says. “And in America we’re seeing more and more women get involved in the shooting sports and it’s awesome. It’s not a guy thing like it used to be.”

That’s why he says having women coaches like Kelly Goeden is helpful.

“My role is mostly just line coaching. Just being a helper, being a female on the range to help make things a little more comfortable for some of the ladies,” Goeden says. “To help them gain some some confidence, and to see that it’s not just a men’s thing. Women can do it too.”

She’s been around guns most of her life. Her husband is the commander at the State Trooper Academy, and he’s a coach at the women’s clinic here tonight, but she only started shooting a few years ago. And she’s good. Goeden won the women’s pistol league last fall.

Kelly Goeden instructs a participant on improving her ‘trigger pull.’ Goeden won last year’s Women’s Pistol League and is an instructor at the clinic. (Photo/KCAW/Katherine Rose)

“I didn’t think that I did,” Goeden says. “I seriously thought I was probably 4th or 5th. There are some great shooters in the women’s pistol league. When he was announcing the winner, I was really pretty.”

Goeden and two other coaches work with the women on trigger pulls, doing a ball and dummy test to see if they’re jerking the trigger or keeping it steady when they shoot. While the shooters turn their backs, the coaches load a single round into some of their pistols, and leave some empty. Then the women turn toward the range, and without knowing if their gun is loaded or not, take a shot.

“It’ll be a visual cue to them ‘oh I really am jerking the trigger.’ Which is probably the most common cause for people not shooting up to their potential, whether they’re men or women,” says Ramp.

Participant Andrea Turner says she’s happy Goeden is there. It does change the student/teacher dynamic.

“She was talking about holding a gun out at arm’s length in front of you, how it uses these muscles that we’re not used to. There are biological aspects for women versus men that are going to be different when we’re shooting, so having her perspective on this is really comforting.”

Turner says she had a very specific reason for attending the gun clinic, to learn and challenge herself in a way that helps inform future conversations about gun ownership and gun violence.

“My thing that I’m working on this year is confronting fear in all aspects of my life,” Turner says. “I’ve had very strong opinions about guns for forever. I got to thinking about it and realized that a lot of those opinions are based on fear, and a lot of that fear is based on the fact that I don’t know a lot about guns or gun safety.”

Ramp and Goeden say that programs like this have helped the sportsman’s association see a big jump in women’s participation.

“It’s been really impressive,” says Goeden. “When we started the women’s pistol league three years ago, I want to say there were about 10 ladies in the league. This past year we ended with 28.”

It’s not all good news. That means more competition for Goeden this fall at the pistol league.

“Some of their groups are pretty impressive,” Goeden says. “I’m not sure I want to shoot against them.”

This reporter tried her hand at shooting a few rounds. (Photo/KCAW/Katherine Rose)

Downloadable audio.

Steve Ramp has done a lot of shooting at the Sportsman’s Association trap range — in daylight. But he’s impressed with the lights. “It was striking how clear it is. You can actually see the steel shot column flying through the air as it hits the bird.” (SSA photo)

Steve Ramp, with the Sitka Sportsman’s Association, and range manager Stan Johnson discuss the state-of-the-art LED lighting system that makes nighttime trap/skeet shooting possible. Also coming up at the SSA: Indoor Pistol League.

Downloadable audio.

Army Corps of Engineers staff conduct a life raft drill in Norfolk, VA. The “out-of-water survival craft” carried by small commercial vessels don’t have to be this sophisticated, but they will be costly. (Flickr photo/Army Corps of Engineers)

Small-boat fishermen who were being compelled by law to buy new liferafts this year have gotten a reprieve.

Congress and the President earlier this month passed a bill turning back a rule which would have required all commercial fishing boats working offshore to carry self-inflating rafts.

Downloadable audio.

President Obama signed the legislation on February 8. It rescinds Coast Guard rules set to go into effect Friday, February 26.

Steve Ramp is a commercial fishing vessel safety examiner with the Coast Guard in Sitka.

“Since 2010, Congress and the Coast Guard have been working toward requiring any vessel working more than 3 miles from shore to have a survival craft. And that survival craft keeps them out of the water.”

That’s Coast Guard-speak for liferaft. Under existing rules, only commercial vessels 36-feet or greater in length, or carrying four or more people, are required to have a so-called “buoyant apparatus.”
Big boats that satisfied the existing requirement with something other than a liferaft, would have been required to upgrade to a raft by November 1.

“Now those changes are on hold.”

Well, why not carry a liferaft? It seems like a no brainer. But Ramp says this equipment is more complicated than you might think.

“Inflatable buoyant apparatus is basically a liferaft without a roof or boarding platform. They are collapsible, inflatable, and they come in a case. And you pull the cord, inflate, and climb in. They have to be sent in every year after they’re two years old to be repacked, inspected, and repaired as necessary, and put new equipment in for stuff that’s expired.”

And they’re more expensive than you might think.

“And on the low end of the cost scale, I think our vendors in town got down to around $1,700 ballpark to purchase a valise pack buoyant apparatus, which is the kind that’s kept inside a soft pack inside the boat — it’s not on a rack out side — you throw it outside, pull the cord, and climb in when your boat is sinking.”

And again, this rule would have applied to any boat working more than 3 miles offshore — even a hand troller in an 18-foot Boston Whaler fishing off Cape Edgecumbe on a bluebird day.

Sitka marine supply store, Murray Pacific, has sold eight liferafts to fishermen planning to comply with the now-rescinded law. Store manager Linda Boord says she’s happy to take them back for refunds.

These eight rafts, plus 12 more in stock — including both the valise-pack and the hard-pack rafts — will be returned to the wholesaler, and ultimately to the manufacturer, Survival Tech. Board says she’ll pay a 25-percent restocking fee.

But Boord also understands if some buyers want to keep the rafts. “I really like these guys to live,” she says.

Steve Ramp, with the Coast Guard agrees. He calls buying rafts a considerable expense, but also a considerable improvement in safety.

Four years ago the vessel Kaitlin Rae flooded in rough seas off the Cape. The skipper, Mac Huffman, made it into his survival suit and found his way ashore. The deckhand, 19-year-old Ryan Harris, only had time to climb into a blue fish tote, in which he drifted for the next 24 hours.

“That blue tote was an out-of-water survival craft, which the Coast Guard wants to require for all boats outside three miles.”

Harris survived, of course, and so might the rules. Ramp thinks the raft requirement will reappear in other Coast Guard rulemaking in the not-too-distant future — possibly as early as a year from now.

Derby leader Bert Edenso says his king didn’t behave like a big one. “There wasn’t much of a battle.” (SSA photo/Eric Jordan)

Sitka Sportsmen’s Association president Steve Ramp, and derby chairman John McCrehin, discuss the 60th Annual Sitka Salmon Derby. 445 fish were landed in first weekend, with the leader topping 42 pounds.

Downloadable audio.