Newsflash

Kurt Sodergren at drums. Photo Courtesy of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy Kayla Desroches/KMXT A big band that might get the audience to jump, jive, and wail is swinging into town to play the first installment in the Kodiak Arts Council’s performing arts season. According to the band’s website, “Big Bad” has been together for 20 plus years and tours full …

Pink salmon. Video still by Chris Newly. As KMXT reported this week, the 2016 Kodiak area pink salmon run has turned out to be among the worst in about 40 years. According to Fish and Game figures, the pink salmon catch through Monday was 3,237,640 – for the whole season. Just 32 humpies were delivered yesterday (Monday); 20 on Sunday, …

A victim of the Island Air crash Sept. 9, 2016, is loaded aboard a Coast Guard helicopter for the flight back to Kodiak. Still from video by U.S. Coast Guard. Jay Barrett & Kayla Desroches/KMXT A float plane crash Friday afternoon in Uganik Lake left three people seriously injured, but there were no reported fatalities. Most seriously injured in the …

Pink salmon. Photo by Nicole Beaulac / Flickr Kayla Desroches/KMXT The pink salmon run was a bad one this year, not just for Kodiak, but for the entire Gulf of Alaska. Alaska Department of Fish and Game area management biologist, James Jackson, says on a good year they’d catch an average of 15 million pinks. He says last year they …

Coming up in this edition, we look north to the coho run on the Yukon and to fish in the increasingly accessible Arctic Ocean. They don’t mess around trying to protect Columbia River salmon, and, there ain’t nothing like hands-on training. We had help from KIYU’s Tim Bodony in Galena, Alaska Energy Desk’s Zoe Sobel in Unalaska, KUOW’s Cassandra Profita …

Cockpit of historic Alutiiq kayak, ca. 1868. Courtesy Presidents and Fellows of Harvard University, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and via alutiiqmuseum.org. Kayla Desroches/KMXT A local craftsman will lead a lecture about Alutiiq kayak carving techniques focused on one example in particular. The Alutiiq Museum is currently exhibiting a seal skin-covered kayak, which Jim Dillard says was probably crafted …

Kodiak Mayor Pat Branson speaks with Skoda marketing executive Werner Eichhorn onstage in Berlin Thursday at the unveiling of the company’s new SUV, the Kodiaq. Earlier today in Berlin, the Czech automobile company Skoda unveiled its newest SUV, the “Kodiaq,” named for, and pronounced like Kodiak, Alaska, despite a spelling difference. The company, which has made cars for 100 years, …

Patrick Saltonstall stands in front of site. Kayla Desroches/KMXT Kayla Desroches/KMXT This year’s Community Archaeology Program, which turns Kodiak locals into archaeologists, wrapped up this month. It was the last year digging the Kashevaroff site at Womens Bay, and Alutiiq Museum Curator of Archaeology Patrick Saltonstall says this year confirmed a lot of the conclusions they’d previously drawn. He says …

Coming up this week: It’s pretty obvious that the humpy season is a bust – we have two stories. Also, fish that was caught “accidentally,” is being put to a good use. We had help from Fish Radio’s Laine Welch in Kodiak, KFSK’s Abbey Collins in Petersburg, and KMXT’s Kayla Desroches in Kodiak.

Brent Watkins is the Democratic candidate for State House Seat 32 in the Alaska Legislature, and is seeking to unseat one-term incumbent Republican Representative Louise Stutes in November. Watkins said the failure of the state leadership is one of not planning beyond being an oil state, something he’d like to change. “We need to look differently at a post oil …