Dipnetting 101 — Proposal would institute mandatory dipnetter education

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter file photo by Patrice Kohl. Dipnetters at the mouth of the Kenai River brave hazy air in search of salmon this summer.

Redoubt Reporter

The results of the personal-use dipnet fishery on the Kenai Peninsula are a stark contrast in opposites. Tens of thousands of Alaskans fill their freezers with low-cost, healthy salmon meat. At the same time, beaches are trashed; private property is trespassed on, used as a latrine and even set on fire; fragile, ecologically sensitive sand dunes and beach grass are trampled and destroyed; management resources are stretched thin; and area residents’ patience is frayed to the limit.

In order to preserve the benefits of the former, a dipnetter from Eagle River is calling on fellow personal-use fishery users to prevent the latter.

“I believe that we do need to take steps to police ourselves before others either police us or eliminate us,” said Steve Rasmussen, of Eagle River, who has been fishing in the Kenai and Kasilof river dipnet fisheries for several years. “I think that, as a group, we’ve become that big of a problem. Although I’ll stress that it’s very few individuals I think that are, quote unquote, the problem. While the great majority of dipnetters are very law-abiding and very respectful, there’s a few, I guess you’d say bad apples, that I think are endangering it for all of us.”

Rasmussen plans to submit a proposal to the Board of Fisheries that would require most dipnetters take a test before being allowed to fish. He proposes the test be presented as an educational tool and not be difficult to pass. Questions would be meant to inform dipnetters about the social responsibility aspects of the fishery — like protecting sand dunes and beach grass, carrying out trash and staying off private property — rather than regulations.

Rasmussen has taught hunter education classes for nearly 10 years, including being a volunteer instructor for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and equates his idea for dipnetter education to the hunter education program.

“The rules are pretty common sense, they’re pretty straightforward. There’s a couple of detailed ones that you actually do have to learn, like recording your catch and clip the fins before they go in the cooler, but other than that I think it’s all common sense so far as dipnetting, and yet it’s not happening,” Rasmussen said. “And so the problem to solve seems to me to be 99.9 percent the exact same problem that hunting had to solve, and it made a huge dent in it through the hunter ed effort. So I propose a similar solution to a similar problem.”

Plugging in to an ecological idea — Landfill to host electronics recycling

By Jenny Neyman

Photo courtesy of Total Reclaim. Workers at a Total Reclaim facility strip down computer monitors to separate out base materials for recycling. Electronics recycling saves landfill space and makes use of nonrenewable resources.

Redoubt Reporter

Technology moves at the speed of light these days. In the blink of the digital time display flashing “12:00” that we never learned to set on our VCRs, that technology is already obsolete.

So what happens to it then? Put it on a shelf somewhere to gather dust? Donate it to a thrift store, where it will still sit on a shelf because other people want to keep up with the times, too? The trash seems to be the only option left.

But before all those wires and circuitry, plastic casings and other nonbiodegradable bits and pieces go to languish in a landfill, consider what else could be done with them. An old-school computer or nonflat-screen TV may not be much use in its current form these days, but those components could be recycled into something else. And if they aren’t, they could do serious damage to the environment.

The Kenai Peninsula Borough Landfill in Soldotna will host an electronics recycling event from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. Volunteers and representatives from Total Reclaim in Anchorage will take old computers, monitors and components, TVs, card machines, cameras, phones, small appliances, tape, disks and the like. At 7 p.m. Wednesday, Reilly Kosinski, outreach coordinator for Total Reclaim, will give a presentation in Room 158 at Kenai Peninsula College about electronics recycling, including demonstrations, explanations of how the process works, and, in particular, why people should do it.

“There are three big benefits,” Kosinski said. “The first one being that you extend the life of your landfills. I know it’s always hard to purchase more land and develop those. Also, the toxic materials inside the electronics, such as the lead, arsenic, beryllium and selenium. We either reuse it or dispose of it properly so it won’t create other environmental consequences. And these components are made of nonrenewable resources — like metals and plastics. So recycling extends the life of those resources. I try to liken us to a mining operation. We’re really taking these materials and, instead of trying to extract them from the earth, we’re reusing this material.”

Marmots be gone — National Maritime Wildlife Refuge plans for Sud Island rodent eradication

By Naomi Klouda

Photo by Steve Ebbert, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The hoary marmot on Sud Island in the Barrens is not native to the island, and is suspected of being the cause behind a severe decline in a rare rhino auklet population that once numbered in the thousands.

Homer Tribune

Few records exist about why a barracks for 15 people was built on Sud Island in the Barrens in 1939. Even less is known about why the hoary marmot suddenly came to live there.

What is known, however, is that thousands of rhinoceros auklet once calling Sud Island home were nearly wiped out by the hoary suspects, said Steve Ebbert, invasive species biologist with the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge.

Along with Alaska Unit biologist Leslie Slater, Ebbert completed an eight-day, summer field survey of the island, and found good news. The shy rhino auklet – which only nests on two other islands in Alaska – has returned despite the marmots’ egg-eating habits and a near 20-year absence.

“We don’t know why the hoary marmot were stocked there. It is documented that the Alaska Game Commission had a lot of stocking projects, but at this point, it’s pure speculation on why,” Ebbert said. “At that time period, the commission was stocking on different islands and in different places in Alaska, in a philosophy of experimenting. They put deer on islands in Prince William Sound, transplanted bison and allowed the furbearers for farming on islands.”

Ebbert noted that the Post-Depression time period offers a few clues. In 1931, the federal government did a coastal survey and left its markers behind, Ebbert said. Sud, which means “South” in French, was one of the islands visited. During that time, the Civilian Conservation Corps was a government program finding ways to put people to work. And given that watchful era prior to World War II, a coastal program was enacted to report suspicious ships as America became increasingly fearful of enemy attacks on Alaska.

In their field work, Ebbert and Slater were able to find the remains of the barracks, as well as a possible weather station at the summit of Sud Island. The island is about one mile by one-half mile, making it the wind-racked Barrens’ smallest member island.

“The barracks could hold 15 people and had a radio tower,” Ebbert said. “If 15 guys are on an island like Sud – which is not easily accessible – and there is no meat on the island, you can see the attractiveness of having it stocked that way.”

Chiming in — Dancers make motions toward new styles

By Jenny Neyman

Photos by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Peninsula Artists in Motion members practice a belly dance in preparation for their performances this weekend in Kenai and Nikiski.

Redoubt Reporter

Peninsula Artists in Motion is chiming in with a new dance style for their annual performance this weekend, one that can be heard as well as seen.

The women’s nonprofit, community dance troupe is unveiling a Bollywood-inspired, belly-dance number, complete with jingling chimes and gold-colored coins affixed to their intricate costumes.

“It’s hard to walk around backstage and not make noise, is the unfortunate part,” said Katrina Carpenter, co-artistic and costume director for PAM, and choreographer of the belly-dancing number.

She’s been teaching belly-dancing classes at Encore Dance Studio for the past three years, and this year decided to try a number with the PAM women. The organization is all about exposing members and the community to new dance styles and expanded opportunities, so she thought it would be a fun challenge.

“It seems like they’re all really excited to do it. Everybody was going, ‘Oh, I hope I can be in that one.’ It’s nice to kind of broaden their horizons, as well. I think everybody is eager to do anything and everything they can,” Carpenter said.

The style of dance has a strong Indian influence, but Carpenter’s choreography also borrows heavily form lyrical, jazz and modern movements.

“It’s a definite mix. It’s nice to be able to experiment with movement and different music styles and what not, too,” Carpenter said. “It’s definitely fun as a choreographer to bring something different to the table.”

Funny business — New play asks audience’s help to solve murder

Photos by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Kim Jordan and Jamie Nelson wrestle for a game-show prop at a rehearsal. The show is part murder mystery, part comedy, all silly fun, and relies on the audience’s help to solve a murder. The show will be performed this weekend and next at Triumvirate.

By Laura Forbes

For the Redoubt Reporter

What do you get when you take a long-running game show, its ambiguously aged host, a librarian, an outrageous feathered gown and mix them with a live studio audience, played by a live Soldotna audience? Expect nothing less than murder, mayhem and a liberal dose of silliness from the cast of Triumvirate Theatre’s latest comedy, “Shop ’Til You Drop, Dead!”

At a recent rehearsal, Director Angie Nelson encourages her actors, saying “As you keep working it, you say your lines more authoritatively, instead of questioning. Keep going!”

This confidence in the story and character development will be important to the production, as the cast will utilize improvisation throughout. The script, by Craig Sodaro, relies on the audience to help drive the solution to this murder mystery as it plays out on the set of a shopping-game show in a studio taping.

Cast members, from left, Nicole Eggholm, Kim Jordan, Jamie Nelson and Marc Berezin rehearse a scene from “Shop ’Til You Drop, Dead!” at Triumvirate Theatre in Soldotna earlier this week.

“The audience has to find certain clues that are in the theater. So if they don’t find the clues, I don’t know what they’ll do. They have to bring their sleuthing skills,” Nelson said. “We’re really making sure we know what information has to get out so the show makes sense.”

Nelson and her cast are enjoying the opportunity to improvise with each other. Director Nelson and cast members Jamie Nelson, Jenny Neyman and Terri Burdick are all Triumvirate veterans. Marc Berezin will tread the boards at Triumvirate Theatre for the first time, though many will know his work from Kenai Performers shows, including his portrayal of Fagin in last winter’s “Oliver.” Kim Jordan worked on “Oliver,” as well, in her theatrical debut on the central Kenai Peninsula theater scene. “Shop ’Til You Drop Dead!” marks the first production for both Jordan and Nicole Eggholm at Triumvirate.

The only difficulty the actors seem to be having as rehearsal goes on is in stifling their laughter.

“Jamie is ridiculous, Nicole’s giggles are contagious. It’s a fun group,” Jordan said.

Drinking on the Last Frontier: Good beer is smoke, but no mirrors — Alaska revisits old technique with tasty results

By Bill Howell, for the Redoubt Reporter

Welcome to Drinking on the Last Frontier. My name’s Bill Howell. I’ve been drinking craft beer and brewing my own for over 20 years, and in this column I’m going to try to convey to you some of the joy and excitement I feel whenever I get the chance to sample an interesting and well-made brew. You might even learn a little something about the history and science of brewing beer, but that will be strictly incidental, I promise.

Normally, I’d start with talking about what’s up at our three local breweries, but Jenny Neyman’s recent article on their seasonal brews has more or less stolen my thunder for a bit, so let’s look at another excellent beer that is hitting the local shelves: Alaskan Brewing Company has just released their Smoked Porter for 2009.

What’s the big deal, you ask?

Well, a few hundred years ago, smoked beers certainly were no big deal. Barley malt, one of the main ingredients in beer, was created by drying germinating barley over wood fires, fires which gave off plenty of smoke. So all beers were smoked beers then. With the invention of other means of drying (like using smokeless coke for fuel or indirect heat from steam), smokiness in a beer was seen as a defect, rather than an inevitability and was more or less done away with, excepting only a few holdouts, like the rauchbiers from Bamberg in Germany (“rauch” means “smoke” in German).

Then in 1988, Alaskan Brewing Company in Juneau decided to try to create their own smoked beer. They used a salmon smokehouse, Taku Smokeries, across the street to make their own alderwood-smoked malt, and Alaskan Smoked Porter was born. In the ensuing 21 years, this Smoked Porter has won more medals at the Great American Beer Festival than any other beer and has inspired many other brewers to cook up their own smoked concoctions. Look for a new batch of Alaskan Smoked Porter about this time every year.

Fit to ride — Still plenty to do before winter snow flies

By Jenny Neyman

Photos by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Justin Moore rides at Tsalteshi Trails with his dog, Ally.

Redoubt Reporter

The temperature was hovering in the lower 30s, cold enough to turn noses red and fingers numb if their bodies weren’t in motion. The sun was out, but not high enough to throw its direct warming rays through the mesh of trees onto the crunchy ground. Surrounded by woods, the wind was more heard than felt, though every once in a while a gust managed to bully through a break in the branches, pricking cheeks with an extra shiver of chilly air.

“Brrrr,” would have been the expected response this time of year, when people tend to cling to warm memories of summer more than embrace the cold of the coming winter. But something far more enthusiastic was heard Saturday at Tsalteshi Trails in Soldotna.

“Woohoo!” called Tony Oliver, as a group of mountain bikers started off on a ride from the Wolverine trailhead, across Kalifornsky Beach Road from the Soldotna Sports Center.

“This is a great time to ride,” said Justin Moore, of Soldotna, who’d put out the invitation to anyone interested Saturday.

He ended up with a group of six, including himself and wife, Orie. Some were more enthusiastic to be there than others.

“This is it. I’m done. This is my last bike ride,” said Steve Ford, as he begrudgingly unslung his bike from the back of his vehicle.

“You’ll warm right up,” Oliver told him.

“I mean, this is great! I’m so glad to be out here,” Ford said.

Science of the Seasons: Go with the glacial outflow

By Dr. David Wartinbee, for the Redoubt Reporter

Photo courtesy of David Wartinbee. Braided streams enter Skilak Lake from Skilak Glacier. In early spring the outflow is bluer, since colder temperatures limit glacial melt, and the amount of glacial flour in the water.

Our local glaciers and ice fields are no longer melting at the fast rates they were earlier in the summer. However, some have large lakes at their terminus that will continue to release water into the Kenai River drainage for some time to come.

Those glacier outlet streams are quite interesting to hydrologists and stream ecologists alike. When seen from the air, they have a distinctive and well-recognized morphology. These streams are usually heavily braided. This means there are all kinds of small branches from any one channel, and shortly downstream, that small channel meets with another or breaks off to form yet another channel. The channels collectively can look like a network or complex web of channels spread all across the valley floor.

The multiple channels of glacier outlet streams are caused by three basic conditions. The first condition is the abundance of smaller sediments being washed away from the glacier. These finer sediments are formed as the glacier grinds its way over underlying rock layers and pushes them to the front of the glacier. Because many of the sediments are fairly small, the water easily carries them away from the glacier. The finest particles, called glacial flour, will remain in suspension and cause the stream water to take on a milky, muddy or concrete-slurry color. If you have ever driven past the entrance to Denali National Park and crossed the gray Nenana River, you understand the concrete color description.

New job of ‘old men’ — Recruit young hunters

By Steve Meyer, for the Redoubt Reporter

Sometimes, when one becomes obsessed with an issue and cannot seem to resolve it, the answer comes only when you least expect it. So it has been for me in trying to figure out what keeps our youth hunting recruitment stagnant.

In spite of the best efforts by a lot of individuals and local, state and federal government departments and hunting and fishing organizations, the effort to recruit youth into the ranks of hunters has largely failed. Special seasons, mentored hunts and special areas for youth hunting have all failed to produce any significant increase in youth participation.

It bodes badly for the future of fish and wildlife in this country. Hunters have long been the backbone for conservation. Without them, the future does not seem promising.

Some of the lack of success is fairly easy to identify. A large share of those participating in special youth hunting seasons and the like are already part of hunting families and are not new to hunting. Therefore, no increase in numbers. There are still a fair number of youth who have no hunting background who participate, but they are not being retained.

These youth show up and maybe go on one hunt with strangers in a setting that minimally represents what hunting is really about.

But then what? Maybe they loved the activity, or at least enjoyed it, so they go home and want to go again but have no avenue to accomplish that. It’s easy to see how quickly a kid is going to move on to something else. A passion for something is not going to occur in a one- or two-day-a-year event. There are mentor programs, but hunters by nature are not going to be drawn to some regimented activity. Hunting is too personal and individualized for that to really work well.

As I was soaking my old, aching back after another three-mile trek in chest waders, it came to me like a lightning bolt to the temple: Old men. The generation that provided the most prolific population of hunters we have ever seen, the baby boomers, grew up with old men.

We had a father, grandfather, uncle or friend, and sometimes all of the above, bring us along on hunting trips, showing us the traditions and extraneous things that are not learned in a classroom.

Hunting for a fine — Supposed violations don’t pan out as expected

By Clark Fair

Photo courtesy of the Fair family. Calvin Fair stands between a pair of Dall sheep rams killed by Dan France and himself on a 1962 hunt in the Kenai Mountains between Tustumena and Skilak lakes.

Redoubt Reporter

Sometimes people can be so certain they are right that they can refuse to notice evidence to the contrary, even when it is placed squarely in front of them. And sometimes, other people, who actually know the truth, can help sustain another’s ignorance simply by playing dumb.

Such was the case in the early 1960s when a young state game warden’s aide learned the hard way not to jump to conclusions — after a pair of Kenai Peninsula hunting pals allowed him to “jump” to his heart’s content.

The pals in this story were Soldotna’s Dan France and Calvin Fair, who flew in France’s red-and-yellow Super Cub into the Tustumena benchlands a day before the opening of the Dall sheep season. France landed his plane on a reasonably flat hillside bordering a pond about four air miles west of the Harding Ice Field.

There, they set up camp, just north of Tustumena Glacier, east of Green Lake and south of the south fork of Indian Creek. After pitching their tent and arranging their packs, they headed further up the hillside to scout for black bear because Fair was hoping to bring one home and smoke the hams. But, bear or no bear, their plans called for a sheep hunt the following day.

Some distance away, they spotted the spike camp of another hunter. They wandered on in for a visit, and they learned that the other man, who had been flown in by Kenai pilot Bud Lofstedt, was also preparing to hunt sheep the next day. He had also spotted a black bear, which he said had been making regular nightly appearances to feed on berries just around the hill from where they were camped.

France and Fair headed south toward the glacier and, sure enough, the bear made an appearance. Fair, a local dentist, took aim with his high-powered rifle, and fired. His shot struck the bear, but the bear didn’t drop. Instead, it bolted farther downhill and disappeared. The two men gave chase.

Refilled — Mugz coffee shop rolls out new menu, same atmosphere

Photo by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Kathy Waterbury makes a latte Monday at Mugz in Soldotna. The coffee shop reopened under new ownership about three weeks ago.

By Jenny Neyman

and AdriAnna Newberry

Redoubt Reporter

 

As the new owner of Mugz Coffee shop in Soldotna, Diane Hinshaw gives some customers a moment of pause when they walk up to the counter.

“They come in and look at me, and look at me, and I go, ‘Picture me in brown,’” Hinshaw said.

A UPS driver for 20 years, Hinshaw now is delivering coffee, soups, sandwiches and desserts in a cozy corner of the Blazy Mall. She retired from UPS recently, and thought owning a coffee shop would be a fun plot line for the next chapter in her life. Mugz’s former owner, Nikki Watts, has had the business up for sale since it closed last winter, and Hinshaw hurried to get into a position to buy it.

“I kept telling her, ‘Let me know if somebody’s going to buy it. Hang onto it, hang onto it,’” Hinshaw said.

Hinshaw did buy it, on one condition from Watts — that the ambiance she so lovingly created when she opened Mugz stayed the same.

“Nikki wanted to make sure nothing was going to change,” Hinshaw said.

That was fine by Hinshaw. She liked Mugz the way it was, and so did the friends she brought in to help her run it, Tracie Daigle and Kathy Waterbury.

“Tracie and I used to go over there and have coffee and sit and relax in the morning before I had to jettison over here to the office,” said Waterbury, who works across the Sterling Highway selling Allstate insurance, in between morning coffee- and lunch-rush shifts at Mugz.

“We moved like one table around and did some other small things, but we really didn’t do a lot of changes. There was no need to, it was nice the way it was,” Waterbury said.

Plugged In: Tangible differences in interchangeable lenses

By Joseph Kashi, for the Redoubt Reporter

Mandatory consumer warning: The following article is probably more incoherent than usual — it was written while a sugar-fueled teen Halloween slumber party was in full cry, complete with four teen girls, two enthusiastic and noisy German shepherds and a dachshund under foot.

Today’s article focuses upon interchangeable lenses for dSLR cameras. Yes, the pun’s intentional, but first let’s veer off-topic. As Emerson noted, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Regular readers will undoubtedly vouch that I do not suffer from smallness of mind, at least as defined by Emerson.

Camera donations needed:  Please call Joe Kashi, 398-0480, if you have any unused recent digital cameras that you would be willing to donate for a digital photography project at some of the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District’s more rural schools. Such a donation could be a useful tax write-off for you as the end of the year approaches.   Digital Single Lens Reflex cameras and lenses, particularly Pentax dSLR bodies, would be particularly appreciated.  We have a number of Pentax lenses already available.