January 9, 2026 — A fishing vessel carrying 50,000 gallons of diesel fuel ran aground on St. George Island Monday, causing a spill, according to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.
The vessel concerned is the fishing vessel Arctic Sea, the DEC says. Alongside the diesel fuel, the ship was also carrying 2,000 gallons of lube oil and hydraulic fluid.
Additionally, about 11,000 lbs of tanner crab were aboard. As of 2:30 p.m. Thursday, it is unknown how much fluid has spilled.
January 8, 2025 — Sea trials are set for mid-January on a vintage Southeast Alaska fishing vessel being equipped with a hybrid engine that will save on diesel fuel and make for a cleaner ocean.
“I’m very excited about it,” said Jeff Turner, a veteran commercial harvester in Sitka and owner of the Mirage, a 50-foot longliner-troller.
Rising costs of diesel fuel initially sparked his interest in converting to a hybrid propulsion system, which can accommodate diesel fuel or electric power, but Turner said there are other advantages to hybrid. “Having a clean ocean. Taking care of the ocean around us is our responsibility, and it’s quieter, less noise pollution. I can see less impact all around,” he said.
Diesel costs stood out, however. “When I was running out west to Seward or Kodiak, fishing in the central Gulf of Alaska, you have to fill the boat (with fish) to make it pencil out well,” he said.
Turner is a member of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association (ALFA), which got some initial help from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the Rockies (NREL). They helped ALFA model energy savings and demands from various systems and researched alternative fuels, said Linda Behnken, a veteran commercial longliner and executive director of ALFA. “They helped us to identify that the hybrid system was the right next step for the ongoing project.”
January 8, 2026 — Alaska’s Congressional delegation has proposed new legislation designed to reduce salmon bycatch in commercial fisheries and protect seafloor habitats from trawling operations.
“In recent years, Alaskans have witnessed unprecedented declines among some fish and crab species in parts of the state while, in other parts, runs have been strong and historic,” U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) said in a release. “We need to get to the bottom of all potential causes of this increased variability, including concerns about bycatch and trawl gear habitat impacts, to strengthen the sustainability of our fisheries.”
January 7, 2026 — Nine crew members were hoisted to a helicopter off a commercial crab boat amid near gale force winds, strong downward drafts from a nearby cliff and rough seas after the fishing vessel grounded on an Alaska island in the Bering Sea.
The Coast Guard said there were no injuries to the crew members of the Arctic Sea, a 134-foot (41-meter) boat owned by the Coastal Villages Region Fund and fishing for tanner crab.
The ship grounded Monday on the northern shore of Saint George Island, the southernmost of the small Pribilofs islands group with fewer than 100 residents, predominantly Aleuts. The group of islands is located about 750 miles (1,207 kilometers) west of Anchorage.
“I’m on the fog, I’m on the beach, we lost our steering,” someone from the Arctic Sea reports to the Coast Guard when calling in a mayday, according to audio provided by the Coast Guard. “We’re taking on water.”
January 5, 2026 — A coalition of nonprofits, fishing organizations, and tribal groups are criticizing the recertification of the Bering Sea Aleutian Islands and Gulf of Alaska flatfish fishery, which includes the Amendment 80 trawling fleet, to the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) standard claiming the process lacked transparency and amounts to “greenwashing.”
The Amendment 80 fleet targets Akta mackerel, Pacific cod, rock sole, yellowfin sole, flathead sole and Pacific Ocean Perch in the Bering Sea, and comprises roughly 20 groundfish-trawling vessels. The fishery was recently the subject of a battle over its allowed halibut bycatch after the North Pacific Fishery Management Council voted to move to abundance-based management and reduce allowed bycatch, which lead to a lawsuit from the fishers that was ultimately dismissed.
December 29, 2025 — The U.S. federal government, the state of Alaska, and the Association of Village Council Presidents (AVCP) have filed briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court in their ongoing battle over a subsistence fishing system which prioritizes rural Alaskans.
“Subsistence is not just a word on paper. It is the heart of our communities, families, elders, and children,” AVCP CEO Vivian Korthuis said in a release. “The state’s continued attacks on these rights are a direct challenge to our traditions and values. Every salmon counts, and we hope that the United States Supreme Court will affirm what we already know to be true. We will continue to advocate for our people, our waters, and Our Way of Life for as long as it takes.”
December 26, 2025 — For Alaska’s fishing industry and fishing-dependent communities, 2025 was a year of turmoil and uncertainty, much of it imposed by ideological pursuits from the new Trump administration.
The short-lived agency called the Department of Government Efficiency hacked away at federal funding for science across the board. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in particular was in its crosshairs; the Heritage Institute’s Project 2025 blueprint for the second Trump administration heaped scorn on NOAA, saying its National Weather Service, National Marine Fisheries Service and other agencies “form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.” The NMFS’ Alaska Fisheries Science Center, which does the bulk of the research on which fishery managers depend, was among the agencies that suffered deep budget and staffing cuts.
The prospect of more cuts is unsettling, some officials said. “I guess now we’re getting to a point that I’m getting really concerned and almost freaked out about how much data that we’re potentially losing that we’re used to having,” Anne Vanderhoeven, a member of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, said on Dec. 4 during that body’s December meeting.
December 18, 2025 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued its annual Arctic Report Card on Tuesday, which documents the way rising temperatures, diminished ice, thawing permafrost, melting glaciers and vegetation shifts are transforming the region and affecting its people. The agency has released the report for 20 years as a way to track changes in the Arctic, according to Yereth Rosen with the Alaska Beacon.
“The Arctic continues to warm faster than the global average, with the 10 years that comprise the last decade marking the 10 warmest years on record,” Steve Thur, NOAA’s acting administrator for oceanic and atmospheric research and the agency’s acting chief scientist, said at a news conference Tuesday.
The report card is a peer-reviewed collaboration of more than 100 scientists from 13 countries, with numerous coauthors from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. It was officially released at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting in New Orleans, where Thur and other officials held the news conference.
The report is the first under the second Trump administration, at a time when the federal government’s commitment to documenting Arctic climate change has diminished: The president has repeatedly called climate change a hoax and federal departments are cancelling climate change-related research and projects, as well as scrubbing climate information from public view.
Read the full article at Alaska News Source
December 17, 2025 — Record-setting temperatures and rainfall in the Arctic over the past year sped up the melting of permafrost and washed toxic minerals into more than 200 rivers across northern Alaska, threatening vital salmon runs, according to a report card issued by federal scientists.
The report, compiled by dozens of academic and government scientists and coordinated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, documented rapid environmental changes from Norway’s Svalbard Island to the Greenland ice sheet and the tundra of northern Canada and Alaska.
Between October 2024 and September 2025, the period from when the ground begins to freeze until the end of summer, surface air temperatures were the warmest on record dating back 125 years, the report found.
“The Arctic region has a powerful influence on Earth’s ecosystem as a whole,” said Steve Thur, NOAA’s assistant administrator for research and acting chief scientist.
This year’s 153-page Arctic report card is coming out despite a shift at the agency, including a focus on commercial aspects of the ocean, such as deep-sea mining. In April, the Trump administration proposed eliminating NOAA’s research arm, a move that would hobble early warning systems for natural disasters, science education and the study of the Arctic. The Trump administration fired 1,000 NOAA employees earlier this year, but has since tried to rehire 450 of them, mostly in its National Weather Service branch.
December 17, 2025 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued its annual Arctic Report Card on Tuesday, which documents the way rising temperatures, diminished ice, thawing permafrost, melting glaciers and vegetation shifts are transforming the region and affecting its people. The agency has released the report for 20 years as a way to track changes in the Arctic.
“The Arctic continues to warm faster than the global average, with the 10 years that comprise the last decade marking the 10 warmest years on record,” Steve Thur, NOAA’s acting administrator for oceanic and atmospheric research and the agency’s acting chief scientist, said at a news conference Tuesday.
The report card is a peer-reviewed collaboration of more than 100 scientists from 13 countries, with numerous coauthors from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. It was officially released at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting in New Orleans, where Thur and other officials held the news conference.
The report is the first under the second Trump administration, at a time when the federal government’s commitment to documenting Arctic climate change has diminished: The president has repeatedly called climate change a hoax and federal departments are cancelling climate change-related research and projects, as well as scrubbing climate information from public view.
Under directives from the Trump administration, NOAA no longer provides information that the National Snow and Ice Data Center once used to monitor sea ice and snow cover, for example. The Colorado-based center now relies on satellite information from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency for its sea ice reports, and it has reduced its analysis.