Beluga dead at river mouth — Juvenile whale entangled in educational fishery set net

By Jenny Neyman

Photos courtesy of LGL Alaska Research Associates, MMPA/ESA research permit No. 14210. Tamara McGuire, wildlife biologist with LGL Alaska Research Associates, has been documenting beluga whales in Upper Cook Inlet as part of a photo identification project. The project has been extended to the Kenai Peninsula Borough. Seen here are examples of some of McGuire’s beluga identification photos from the project.

Redoubt Reporter

Though an updated Cook Inlet beluga whale population survey isn’t going to be conducted until early June, there is one recently confirmed change to the 2011 population number, when a subadult beluga was caught in the Kenaitze Indian Tribe’s educational fishery set gillnet near the mouth of the Kenai River on May 7.

“We were deeply saddened. This was not an intentional harvest,” said Sasha Lindgren, cultural director for the Kenaitze Indian Tribe.

The whale was found the evening of May 7 in the tribe’s educational fishery net, about a mile south of the mouth of the Kenai off Cannery Road.

Lindgren said that the crew running the net was on the beach, noticed the whale and called authorities.

“We’re not exactly sure what happened, if the beluga was dead and got caught. It looks like it was dead and just it rolled up into the net with the surf action, so we’re thinking it was dead or had no strength, because normally they go right through a net,” she said.

Barbara Mahoney, with the National Marine Fisheries Service out of Anchorage, said the

Photos courtesy of LGL Alaska Research Associates, MMPA/ESA research permit No. 14210

cause of death wasn’t immediately clear. Representatives from the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward collected the whale May 8 and performed an autopsy.

“The cause of death is not known at this time, but tissue samples have been sent out for analysis,” Mahoney said. She said that it could take weeks for the necropsy samples to come back.

Beluga sightings spark 80 years of memories

By Naomi Klouda

Homer Tribune

“Since I ran every day, I saw the belugas regularly. They were usually diving for fish. I ran along the beach below the bluff where I lived and the belugas would swim along next to me at high tide. And they would be singing while I ran. They liked to play, so they would keep pace with me for a short period of time, maybe 10 minutes, and then swim on. I remember thinking it was cool when I saw them.” — Unidentified interview

Beluga stories abound, and so does mystery on the whales’ basic habits — until a newly released report filled in many details. Cook Inlet beluga whales steered clear of the southern waters beyond Kachemak Bay, where orca whales pose a threat.

A single beluga was seen swimming with porpoises in 2006 off the Glacier Spit. It was seen again in Halibut Cove. That was one of the last live beluga sightings in the bay, said Janet Klein, a historian who conducted interviews compiled in “An Oral History of Habitat Use by Cook Inlet Belugas in Waters of the Kenai Peninsula Borough.” Authors, including Klein, were Ian M. Dutton, Karen J. Cain, Ricky Deel, Rebekka Federer, Hillary LeBail and Joseph Hunt. The report is now available to the public through libraries, but will not be sold in stores.

“We were really going back in time because we were trying to ascertain habitat use and population distribution,” Klein said. “The more recent memories were not the main part of discussion, but we did record them. There have been few and far between. We were looking for historic information.”

School talks stall again — Associations say KPBSD pays worst of large districts in state

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

Collective bargaining teams for the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District, Kenai Peninsula Education Association and Education Support Association met Monday in Soldotna in an attempt to iron out the details of a contract to cover the next three years, but again left the table without resolution on the two biggest-ticket items remaining — salary and health care.

No further negotiation dates have been set for the spring or summer. The associations have put in a request for arbitration, which would begin in the fall. The teams already have gone through mediation earlier this month, after which the associations filed a claim of unfair labor practices against the district for publicly disseminating details of the school district’s offer. The ULP charges that information presented in closed-session mediation should have been kept confidential. Pegge Erkeneff, communications specialist for the KPBSD, offered the district’s response Monday:

“The district is aware that a ULP has been filed with the Alaska Labor Relations Agency. We’re prepared to assist ALRA in finding a positive outcome to the claim, and the district is very confident that the charges will not be substantiated and we’ll be able to continue to bargain for a successful settlement for employees, and that affects the students of the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District.”

After mediation, the teams agreed to meet Monday in an effort to settle contracts before the end of the fiscal year June 30. That did not happen.

“The bottom line is that the district refuses to meet our reasonable proposal on health care or salary. If we can’t fix health care, then I don’t see how this is going to end with an agreement,” said Joe Rizzo, spokesman for the KPEA bargaining team.

“The district is confident that we are offering a competitive package,” Erkeneff said.

New leash on life — Rescue program places military dog with Kenai Peninsula family

By Joseph Robertia

Photo by Joseph Robertia, Redoubt Reporter. Nick, a German shepherd recently retired from bomb-detecting work for the Transportation Security Administration, now greets gym members at the Peninsula Athletic Club with his new owner, Becky Marino, the gym’s manager. He was adopted from a program which seeks homes for retired military dogs out of Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.

Redoubt Reporter

Stepping into the Peninsula Athletic Club, gym members are greeted daily from behind the counter by the smiling face of a retired military veteran named Nick, and a few who get too close even get their faces licked.

“He really likes coming to work and greeting people,” said Becky Marino, the gym manager who, since February, has owned Nick, a large, fit, 8-year-old, black-and-tan German shepherd.

Marino’s canine companion wasn’t always an athletic club ambassador, though. Nick recently retired from serving his country for the past five years by using his nose to find explosives while working as a bomb-detecting dog for the Transportation Security Administration.

“Due to security issues they don’t tell you a lot, but they said the dogs indicate when they’ve had enough and Nick was showing signs he wasn’t interested anymore,” Marino said.

Nick was sent back to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, where he was initially trained at the Department of Defense’s Military Working Dog School. There he used his still-sharp skills to help train up-and-coming pups to follow in his paw steps, but once done with that task he was ready for retirement.

“He was still young and healthy, so he was put up for adoption, as happens with many dogs there when done with the service,” Marino said.

What a hit — Sterling gets big kick from new judo program

By Joseph Robertia

Photos by Joseph Robertia, Redoubt Reporter. Bob Ermold and Jacob McConnell perform pushups to build strength and warm up their muscles before a class of the Sterling Judo Club on May 15.

Redoubt Reporter

Like many mothers, Donna Edmunds, of Sterling, was excited when her oldest son, 5-year-old Jacob, began elementary school. It was a high-water mark, of sorts, but as with many tides, not everything that washes in is positive.

Sometimes, when youngsters come together for the first time, despite the best efforts of administrators, teachers and parents, bullying can take place. In an effort to ensure her son remained safe when out of her sight, Edmunds enrolled him in a newly started Sterling Judo Club, to teach him some fundamentals of defending himself.

“At his age, it’s not very technical. It focuses a lot on how to fall forward or backward and protect your head, if someone were to push you. It teaches him moves to get out of being held down, all important things at his age, and things you’re worrying about when your kid is out on the playground,” she said.

“And it works,” Edmunds added. “I’ve seen him use it with kids trying to push him

Kyran Mumm receives his yellow belt, his first promotion since beginning judo classes Feb. 14.

around. He didn’t bully anyone, but he used it to prevent being bullied.”

It is stories such as these that inspired Robert Brink, of Sterling, to again take on the role of sensei, teaching classes Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Now a black belt, Brink first began judo in 1962 in Japan while serving in the Navy. Over the 50 years since then, he has taught judo and started several judo clubs in the Lower 48 and Alaska, and it was a recent communication from an old student that got him to again don his gi.

“I got an email from someone I had in my class from back in the’70s when I taught judo up at Fort Richardson. He said he was a gangly kid who got an education he never forgot from judo. The experience stayed with him the rest of his life and he now had a son he had gotten into it,” he said.

Art Seen: ‘Small Shots’ show offers big rewards

By Zirrus VanDevere, for the Redoubt Reporter

The most enticing piece for me in this year’s “Small Shots” exhibition has got to be Rachel

“Effulgence” by Rachel Lee

Lee’s high-contrast photo of a plant in a bottle she calls “Effulgence.” The contrast between the organic plant matter and the cold glass is rendered irrelative because the lighting seems to treat each element in a similar manner, making them feel as if they are of the same substance.

Each year, Bill Heath curates an exhibit at the Kenai Fine Arts Center that has as its only criteria that the work must not surpass a certain dimension. In many ways, this creates a kind of level playing ground for artists of all levels of accomplishment. Nobody gets to wow the viewer with large formats and impressive printing techniques, so the images have to stand on their own merit. The exhibit is not limited to photography, either, and those who chose to offer nonphotographic work did so with a sense of humor and grace.

Almanac: New home, citizenship for Old Believers

Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part story about how a group of Russian religious dissidents became Kenai Peninsula residents and U.S. citizens. Last week, part one described the around-the-world trek these dissidents embarked upon in order to find religious freedom and escape persecution. This week, part two reveals how Kenai Peninsula Community College and a retired brigadier general helped the Russians become naturalized citizens in 1975.

By Clark Fair

Photo by John Jones, courtesy of the UAA Consortium Library. Russian Old Believers take a U.S. naturalization course in 1975 from Kenai Peninsula Community College. From left are Kiril Martushev, instructor Bob Moore, and husband and wife Tidoysia and Ivan F. Reutov.

Redoubt Reporter

The list contained the names of 59 adults. The members of four extended families — the Reutovs, the Martushevs, the Kuzmins and the Basargins — accounted for more than 40 of the names, all from the village of Nikolaevsk, and all of them about to become citizens of the United States.

The date was June 19, 1975, and a special U.S. District Court session in the gymnasium of Chapman School in Anchor Point had become a naturalization ceremony for this band of former Russian dissidents, the oldest of whom had embarked more than 50 years earlier on a round-the-world trek of more than 20,000 miles across three continents.

Seeking religious freedom and escape from the influences of communism, the Russians had fled their original home near Vladivostok to the Manchuria region of China, then to Hong Kong, to Brazil and to Oregon before settling on the Kenai Peninsula in early 1968. For $14,000, they purchased a square mile of state land east of Anchor Point and carved out a home there, and by the time of the naturalization ceremony their village boasted a population of nearly 300 residents.

In the gym that day, the 59 Old Believers and most of the rest of the village residents wore their finest and brightest garments, their “Easter clothes,” according to a Betzi Woodman story in the Anchorage Daily Times. The style of dress was largely reminiscent of life in Russia 300 years earlier, when their ancestors had broken with the Russian Orthodox Church because they opposed Patriarch Nikon’s changes to their ways of worship. These dissidents became known as the Staroviertsi, or “Old Believers,” and thus began a life of secret worship, persecution and a fervent hope of freedom.

Driven to Distraction: As spring speeds ahead, drivers should slow down

By Sally Cassano-Archuleta, for the Redoubt Reporter

As the 2012 summer season approaches, we can expect more traffic on Kenai Peninsula highways. Unfortunately, this usually means an increase in accidents and fatalities. It’s best if we accept that there will be slower speeds, more distractions and longer commute times. Please plan ahead. Give yourself more time each day to get from point A to point B and try to preplan your route, as to minimize unnecessary maneuvers.

A well-planned route has four to five maneuvers planned in advance. For example, be in the correct lane well in advance, and don’t be tempted to pass. If you must, please wait until you are in a four-lane section of highway. This way, you can do so traveling in the same direction. Trying to “save” time between our cities, in such close proximity, will only increase your risk and the risk to those around you. Remember that driving is a shared responsibility. Often, when you are passed on a two-lane highway, you both end up at the first traffic light together anyway.

One of the worst traffic violations on the Kenai Peninsula, not to mention the most dangerous, is passing where we shouldn’t. These areas include solid yellow lines and solid white lines. All solid lines are restrictive. Do not drive along the shoulder of the highway before turning right. Do not go around vehicles exiting the highway, whether they are turning left or right.

Single-file driving is single-file driving. Keep your vehicle square, in your lane. Do not create space for others to be tempted to pass illegally. Remember that only bicyclists and pedestrians are allowed across the solid, white line except in cases of emergency, and pulling over in that situation should be preceded by the appropriate signal and hazard lights. Pull over immediately when seeing EMS vehicles with lights flashing. It is illegal to do otherwise.

Plugged In: Olympus’ savior camera proves worth the money

By Joe Kashi, for the Redoubt Reporter

Olympus’ newest camera, the OM-D, is receiving rave reviews, with early stocks selling out quickly, and deservedly so. There’s an emerging consensus that the OM-D is the best compact-system camera now on the market and that its runaway success will save Olympus as an independent company.

Readers may recall that Olympus was rocked in late 2011 by revelations of a long-running corporate accounting and governance scandal that resulted in the resignation of all its top officers and most of the board of directors. Olympus’ balance sheet was none too healthy, particularly at its camera division. At the time, many observers publicly wondered whether Olympus would survive.

I’ve not heard such speculation in months. Instead, Olympus is the happy possessor of the hottest new camera on the market, the OM-D, a Micro Four-Thirds (M 4/3) camera that’s among the smallest yet most capable compact-system cameras. The OM-D (also confusingly called the E-M5) is very similar in design and appearance to the company’s fondly remembered OM series of compact film SLR cameras sold during the 1970s and 1980s. The new OM-D carries on the tradition. It’s pleasing to the eye and comfortable in the hand (well, at least in my hands).