Wave energy — Tidal study to map where power may be harnessed

By Naomi Klouda

This map shows the tide sampling stations in Cook Inlet.

Homer Tribune

Imagine a time ahead when tidal power will be as easy to tap as hanging up a solar panel. A time when turning on the lights involves depending on the power of storms rather than crude oil hauled from the depths of the earth.

That possibility might not be too far into the future.

Three partners launched 10 tidal monitoring stations last week from Turnagain Arm in Upper Cook Inlet to Kachemak Bay in Lower Cook Inlet for a viable start to the process. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services measures the currents and the Coast Survey Development Laboratory built a hydrodynamic model. The Alaska Energy Authority has the funding.

The project involves collecting readings from the meters over a two-month period, said Kris Holderied, manager of the NOAA Kasitsna Bay Laboratory.

“The current meters will be in place for two months and will be recovered in August,” Holderied said. “The current meter deployments are part of a partnership project between NOAA and the Alaska Energy Authority to quantify the tidal energy potential in Cook Inlet.”

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.

Tsunami debris: Center prepares for beach cleanup

By Naomi Klouda

Photo courtesy of Homer Tribune. Volunteers collect washed-up junk off the beach in Kachemak Bay.

Homer Tribune

A prevalent problem with marine trash is the tragedy it causes marine life when a bird plucks a morsel that is actually Styrofoam, or when a seal gets strangled by fishing nets.

If there’s a good side to the massive patch of Japanese tsunami debris en route to Alaska, it’s the awareness brought to the problem. People will meet the trash on the beach and clean it up before it can trap unsuspecting animals.

Homer beach monitors have been at it for a few months now, eyeing the tidelines and removing garbage, said Patrick Chandler, special programs coordinator at the Alaska Center for Coastal Studies.

“We’ve been monitoring beaches for 28 years in Kachemak Bay. We’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s coming up and what has come up,” Chandler said.

“The entire tsunami debris problem is a difficult issue. The reason is because we’ve been getting Asian debris in Alaska for many, many years. We know because of the ship that made it over here, we know that high windage items — buoys that float high that get a lot of wind to get that push — we get those.”

Japanese floats were found from Nanwalek. Last week, Halo Bay Bear Viewing pilots flying between Homer and Katmai came upon large yellow buoys. Kachemak Bay also has seen scattered buoys, with a possible range all the way down the Kenai Peninsula, according to NOAA estimates.

NOAA sightings have confirmed that debris is not in fields or islands, but scattered over a large

Graphic courtesy of Homer Tribune.

area of the North Pacific.

The problem is the difficulty in confirming whatever comes ashore was washed loose from the massive spread of trash, he said. The tsunami struck in March 2010, with the potential for years of strewn trash carried on currents. Much of it likely sank.

The government of Japan estimates that the tsunami swept roughly 5 million tons of debris into the Pacific Ocean. Of this 5 million tons, they

estimate that roughly 70 percent sank near shore, leaving 30 percent, or roughly 1.6 to 1.7 million tons of debris floating off the coast. That aligns with previous NOAA data and experience from similar events that shows that the majority of heavier debris is likely to sink in the near shore area. Floating items — including boats that pose navigation hazards — are left to be carried on currents.

“What I can say is over past few weeks we’re finding uncommon buoys – big white Styrofoam buoys. We know they are of Japanese origin,” Chandler said.

Wild water in inlet — Waterspout spotted off Anchor Point

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

Robin Lipinski is used to the unusual when looking out over Cook Inlet. Endlessly variable vistas are part of why he lives where he does, about three miles north of the Anchor River, in Anchor Point, overlooking the inlet.

“You never know what you’re gonna see out there, either ship traffic or weather,” Lipinski said.

In his seven years in that spot, or even his time in the Coast Guard, commercial fishing or as a charter fishing operator, what he saw on the water Wednesday afternoon was a first for him.

A 30-foot-diamater waterspout, whirling to life midinlet and sweeping toward shore, gorging itself on water sucked from the surface, spewing spray 40 to 50 feet in the air. If it had been on land, Lipinski figures it was strong enough to rip tin off a roof.

“It was a big white funnel that was hanging off the bottom of the cloud, then you could see it moving toward the east. The water was really just boiling,” Lipinski said. “If there were any little minnows on the surface of the water they went for a ride.”

He had been hanging shingles on his house Wednesday around 3:30 p.m., enjoying a rare period of fall warmth and calm air. Out on the water, however, conditions were not as mild.

“One side of the inlet was sunny, the other side of the inlet where the funnel was coming from was one of those big cumulonimbus clouds — one of those big thunderhead-looking things. It was actually pretty warm, and I think that’s why it formed. I think it was hot meeting cold,” Lipinski said. “It’s this time of year, I guess, when the weather’s changing. It’s winter one day, summer the next.”

Stock up on king data — Genetic testing adds to Kenai, inlet knowledge

By Jenny Neyman

Photos courtesy of Tim McKinley, Alaska Department of Fish and Game. An Alaska Department of Fish and Game technician takes a tissue sample from a monster king salmon at the Fish and Game test-net site on the lower Kenai River. Samples are run through genetic testing to determine which spawning stock the fish is from.

Redoubt Reporter

As much as we might wish them to, fish simply don’t talk. Though biologists and fishery managers in Cook Inlet are constantly trying to learn more about king salmon, especially those from the Kenai River, pulling a chinook alongside a boat and asking it, “Where you from?” “Been here long?” or “Where you headed?” does not elicit a response. At least, not in so many words.

But advances in genetic testing make it just about that easy to get much better acquainted with king salmon.

“It’s pretty simple anymore,” said Tim McKinley, research biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game Sport Fish Division. “In this business, when there’s a change in technology there’s rapid learning that goes on about your critter of interest. It’s kind of like when they put the Hubble Telescope up there. It was a whole new leap in technology for the astronomers and physicists and everything else.”

The leap for fishery biologists came with improvements in genetic testing that led to much easier and cheaper ways to derive information from tissue samples. Twenty-five years or so ago, genetic sampling of salmon was a time-intensive, technical, expensive and deadly process.

“If you were going to take genetic samples from fish you had to kill the fish because you were taking all kinds of weird stuff — like heart tissue or kidney or liver and blood. And then, once you took that sample, it had to be preserved using stuff like liquid nitrogen,” McKinley said.

Running the genetic testing lab work could cost a couple hundred dollars per sample.

“If you needed to run dozens or hundreds or thousands of samples, it gets ridiculous,” McKinley said.

Pouring over oil transit details — Transportation risk analysis to study, reduce dangers of Cook Inlet spills

By Jenny Neyman

Photo courtesy of Dr. David Wartinbee. Escopeta’s Spartan jack-up rig makes its way up Cook Inlet this August. Cook Inlet is expected to see increased traffic in the next 10 years.

Redoubt Reporter

Given the myriad risk factors of an oil spill that a new Cook Inlet marine transportation study will be considering, the wonder isn’t the danger that spills could occur, it’s the fact that there haven’t been more of them.

“We’ve been very lucky,” said Tim Robertson of Nuka Research and Planning, which is facilitating the study. “Any of these kind of catastrophic or very serious oil spills are very low frequency events, and we’ve just been lucky that we haven’t had a serious incident. All of the parts and pieces are here for a very serious type of accident.”

The level of risk of an oil spill is a product of frequency and consequence, Robertson said — how much opportunity there is for a problem and how significant the damages could be. In Cook Inlet, both factors are great.

“We have significant vessel traffic,” he said. “We have a number of large ships that come in, including crude oil tankers and oil product tankers. We have the very large, very fast container ships that are essentially our supply line in Alaska. We have a number of smaller bulk carriers that haul fishery or forest products, and intermixed with all this other traffic are tugs and barges and fishing vessels.”

Large or small, quick or plodding, carrying environmentally hazardous products as cargo or just as fuel, each of those vessels faces significant navigational challenges in Cook Inlet.

“We have tremendous tides, and currents that are driven by the tides, that make navigation difficult in Cook Inlet,” Robertson said. “We’ve got a lot of shoal waters, waters that are shallow so a ship has to be very careful to be in their channels, not like some other places where it’s broad and deep. We have the ice season in the wintertime, which is really the only major port in North America that deals with significant ice accumulations in the wintertime. And we also have a lot of darkness and periods of obscured visibility. All those things are risk factors.”

If there is a spill, the possible environmental damage is great — world-class fish runs, federally protected beluga whales, migratory birds and sea life. And what’s being hauled isn’t the only danger. The fuel required to do the hauling would also be hazardous if spilled into the inlet.

“It’s not just looking at the cargo being crude oil. Even if the vessel is carrying something benign, like pingpong balls, if there’s an incident it still has its own fuel source on-board. There is a risk of danger regardless of the cargo,” said Jerry Rombach, director of public outreach for the Cook Inlet Regional Citizens Advisory Council.

In the past three decades, there’s only been one significant spill in Cook Inlet — when the tanker Glacier Bay ran aground on a large submerged rack on July 2, 1987, and spilled 207,000 gallons of oil. And there’s been one recent major close call, on Feb. 2, 2006, when an ice floe tore the tanker Seabulk Pride lose from the KPL dock in Nikiski and pushed it aground about a half mile up the beach.

Overall, Cook Inlet’s record of oil spills is relatively unfouled, particularly considering the amount of vessel traffic and the navigational hazards that exist. The point of a maritime transportation risk assessment of Cook Inlet currently being launched is to keep that record clean.

“There haven’t been many incidents but there have been a few and it only really takes one. It gets people thinking about the risks involved in maritime navigation, and especially with our oil production and oil shipping in the inlet, it is even more necessary that we take a look to determine if our navigation needs warrant any additional oversight,” Rombach said.

CIRCAC is partnering with the Coast Guard and Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation to conduct the assessment. It is a federal requirement added by Congress to the reauthorization of the Coast Guard in 2010 that such an assessment be done, prompted in part by the Seabulk Pride incident, and even more so by the Selendang Ayu incident in 2004, when the cargo freighter ran aground off the coast of Unalaska and spilled an estimated 350,000 gallons of bunker oil and diesel.

A marine transportation risk assessment has already been conducted for the Aleutian Islands region, and now it’s Cook Inlet’s turn. Nuka Research, based in Seldovia, was contracted to facilitate the process, as it did for the Aleutians project and has done for the Alaska DEC in assessing risks of land-based oil spills statewide.

The study is expected to cost under $2 million, Rombach said, with about $430,000 being secured so far.

“We know we’ve still got fundraising to do, but this gets us about a fourth of the way to where we need to be. It’s enough that we can get a big part of it under way,” Rombach said.

The project will include three phases. The first is to assess current vessel traffic in Cook Inlet and project what traffic will be like over the coming 10 years.

“It looks at what types of vessels are here, what kind of cargo are they carrying, how much fuel they have on board, what kinds of fuel they have on board, what routes they take, that sort of thing,” Robertson said.

An initial Cook Inlet marine traffic analysis was completed in 2006, so this will be an update of existing data. It’s likely to show an increase in traffic, Rombach said, especially with increased oil and gas exploration activity, such as the arrival of Escopeta’s Spartan jack-up rig, and the expected addition of another jack-up rig from Buccaneer Energy this winter.

“We tend to think that there’s a higher level of activity in the inlet. Some of that might be wishful thinking, but some smart people are saying there’s a lot of oil left in the inlet. We’re not fortune tellers, we don’t know what might happen with the gas pipeline coming to Nikiski, but we just think all signs point toward a greater level of activity in the inlet and we want to be prepared,” Rombach said.

Next will be taking that 10-year projection and estimating what potential accidents could occur, given that traffic. A panel of experts will review those two reports to analyze what impacts may occur if those accidents were to happen.

“Where would oil go if it ended up in the inlet? They would do a trajectory analysis. And experts from natural resource agencies might estimate what would get oiled if these spills occurred. It gives us the consequences,” Robertson said.

An advisory panel representing various stakeholder groups and agencies will monitor these phases, then take all the resulting information and come to a consensus on recommendations to submit to the Coast Guard that would increase vessel safety and decrease the risk of spills in the inlet.

“At the end of it, we will have this risk picture. They’ll look at it and say, ‘OK, these are the things we can do to reduce the risk — either reduce the frequency of the accidents or the severity or the consequences of the accidents,” Robertson said.

The recommendations could be simple or complex. Some of the suggestions from the Aleutians advisory panel in the wake of the Selendang Ayu spill, for example, were for the Coast Guard to keep specialized equipment on-board and to have different vessels available to respond immediately to an incident.

“Some might be fulfilled just by the Coast Guard tweaking how it operates. Some others might require new regulations, so that you’d have a whole new regulatory process that would kick in that would include public comments and writing new regulations and rules and so forth,” Rombach said. “We really don’t know where this will take us, but some of it could be quickly implemented, some other suggestions might take longer to implement.”

Rombach said the advisory panel will operate as independently from the management team as possible, even to the point that some of its recommendations may not be exactly what the steering agencies would like to see result from the process.

“We (CIRCAC) would like to see (a requirement for) double-hulled vessels, for example. But the recommendation might be that, based on the hazards that are identified and the traffic patterns that are projected, the panel may say, ‘We don’t think that’s necessary.’ So we know that there might be some undesirable recommendations (from what CIRCAC may prefer) that might come out of this, and we’re prepared for that.”

Currently, applicants are being sought to serve on the advisory panel, with one panelist and one alternate from 12 identified stakeholder categories, including Cook Inlet ports and harbors; land and natural resource managers; Alaska Native Tribes and subsistence users; nongovernmental organizations; the fishing industry; mariners in local trades, including tugs and barges, container ships and tank vessels; marine salvage and rescue tug operators; marine pilots; and oil platform or mobile drilling platform operators.

Panelists will be appointed as individuals, not representatives of a company or organization, and will be selected based on their knowledge of local infrastructure, relevant industries, waterways, navigation, weather, habitat and area use.

“I consider this our key to success is seating a good advisory panel. We’re looking for folks with knowledge of their stakeholder group, willing to come to the table and learn. Our experience with this process is everyone has something to teach everyone else,” Robertson said.

The deadline for submitting an application to serve on the advisory panel is Aug. 26. The application can be downloaded on the risk assessment website, http://www.cookinletriskassessment.com. Completed forms can be emailed to CIRAapplicants@nukaresearch.com or faxed to 240-368-7467. Notification of the selections is expected by Sept. 1, with the first panel meeting slated for Sept. 12 in Anchorage.

For more information on the risk assessment, including all relevant documents, schedules and contacts that will be updated as the process continues, visit www.cookinletriskassessment.com.

As this process begins, Rombach cautions Cook Inlet residents to realize that it takes more than good luck to avoid oil spills.

“Particularly in a place like Cook Inlet, and particularly with the nature of the cargo largely being gas or oil, that just almost screams for this attention to be given to navigational hazards. We would like to think that the shippers in Cook Inlet, the oil processors and operators, the oversight of our organization and the presence of an outfit like (Cook Inlet Spill Prevention and Response), that we are as prepared as any place on Earth for an incident of almost any kind,” he said. “This is just one more piece of the puzzle that hopefully, when the effort is all said and done, we will have a product and set of recommendations that will take us even further than other parts of the country, and other parts of the world, in preparedness.”

Anglers protest losing bait — Kenai sportfishermen bristle at restrictions while commercial fishery is liberalized

By Jenny Neyman

Submitted photo. Sportfishermen and guides clog the parking lot of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game on Kalifornsky Beach Road on Monday to protest restrictions on the Kenai River king fishing, while commercial fishermen are seeing liberalized openings for sockeyes.

Redoubt Reporter

Mondays being drift-boat-only days on the Kenai River, with no power boats allowed, they are typically the only day a week off fishing guides with power boats get all week. This Monday guides still hitched their boats to their trucks and went angling. But instead of heading to the river to help their clients catch king salmon, as they would any other day of the week, it was to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game office on Kalifornsky Beach Road to angle for king-friendly support from fishery managers.

About 100 guides, as well as fishing clients and private sportfishermen, plugged the Fish and Game parking lot with trucks, boats and trailers and staged a protest outside the office at about 7 a.m. Monday.

The purpose was to demonstrate their displeasure with measures to restrict king fishing in the Kenai while at the same time liberalizing commercial fishing in Cook Inlet.

“We were there just to show, ‘Hey, we take this seriously and we hope that they do too,’” said Dave Goggia, president of the Kenai River Professional Guides Association.

Skiff sinks in inlet — All 4 fishermen aboard rescued in rough seas

By Joseph Robertia

Photos by Joseph Robertia, Redoubt Reporter. Following a close call in which a skiff sank and four commercial fishermen went into the cold water of Cook Inlet on Monday evening, those same fishermen worked into the darkness to finish picking the nets of salmon that did make it to shore.

Redoubt Reporter

When commercial fishermen string out their nets, they are set with hopes of hauling in a big return of salmon. On Monday night, four seasonal fishermen found out there can be too much of a good thing when they nearly lost their lives while fishing off Humpy Point in Cook Inlet.

“When I came up to do this I knew it would be dangerous, and I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but I know I definitely did not expect that,” said first-year set-net fisherman Jared Turbyfill, 25, of Oklahoma, after the 23-foot skiff he was on swamped and sank a mile and a half from shore.

Also on the boat were Anna Berington, 27, of Kasilof; Austin Borcherding, 23, from California; and Matt Scibold, 24, of North Carolina.

Ocean Beauty pulls out of inlet

By Naomi Klouda

Homer Tribune

Ocean Beauty Seafoods, a major salmon buyer on the Kenai Peninsula  both on the Homer Spit and at Nikiski, has ceased all its Cook Inlet operations.

Ocean Beauty sent the news out in letters to commercial fishermen telling them of the transition, said Vice President Tom Sunderland. Pacific Star will now handle all of the buying transactions.

Ocean Beauty Seafoods LLC, a pioneer in the Northwest and Alaska seafood industry, ranks among the largest and most successful seafood companies in the Pacific Northwest. It began as a Seattle seafood business in 1910 and has operated in Alaska nearly that long, Sunderland said. Ocean Beauty will continue its operations on Kodiak Island and Cordova, as well as its canneries at Naknek, Kodiak, Alitak, Cordova, Excursion Inlet and Petersburg.

“The economics of processing hasn’t been as positive (on Cook Inlet) as in other areas of the state,” Sunderland said. “We will employ more people statewide this year than last year. But salmon processing economics for us on the Kenai haven’t been very good. The canneries that are left are good business.”

A salmon processing plant at Nikiski owned by Ocean Beauty for now isn’t going to be sold.

“We could sell it or re-open it at some point, but right now it is sitting dark,” he said.

Cook Inlet’s toxic debate — 9th Circuit Court gives pollution control to state, taking away federal oversight

By Sean Pearson

Homer Tribune

The state applauded a recent decision by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that gives power over regulating water pollution from the federal to the state government, but while toxic dumping continues, the change gives little comfort to conservation groups.

The higher court is upholding the transfer of the permitting program for discharges under the Federal Clean Water Act from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. At the same time, the court sent back a Cook Inlet dumping permit for additional review.

The first decision has no impact on the second as of yet, since the EPA is still the permitting authority for Cook Inlet. That’s not much consolation to a coalition of fishing, Alaska Native and conservation groups who continue to shake their heads about how to mitigate the dumping of toxic oil and metals into the fisheries-rich waters.

According to Cam Leonard, attorney handling the case for the Alaska Department of Law, the DEC is taking over the permitting process in four stages, with oil and gas being the very last.

“The DEC hasn’t actually taken over the permitting process yet,” Leonard said. “That will happen a year from now. For now, the EPA retains permitting authority.”

Stranded in history — Corea wreck eroding into obscurity

By Clark Fair

Photo courtesy of the Alaska and Polar Regions Archives of UAF. As a strong tide rolled out of Cook Inlet on April 23, 1890, the Corea was rolling in. However, the vessel struck a sandbar at 3 a.m. of a dark, thick night and was stuck there until a high tide lifted it free, before running aground shortly after.

Redoubt Reporter

Our perception of what is historically important is often determined by the names we assign to the events or objects that reflect that history. A name acts like a marker, reminding us of the past. Consequently, when a name disappears, the associated history tends to follow.

For example:

Mike Steik, who was born in Ninilchik in 1934, can remember an old marine navigation map that he once kept rolled up in his boat when he fished commercially in the early 1950s. On that map, just south of Corea Creek, lay a stretch of shoreline clearly labeled “Corea Bend.”

Since he stopped fishing after he was drafted into the military in 1956, Steik said he has lost track of that map, and he can’t remember seeing one since that featured the name “Corea Bend.”

Nick Leman, 92, who was born in Ninilchik in 1917 and honeymooned with his wife, Marian, in a small cabin near Corea Bend in August 1947, said that that stretch of shoreline has been called Corea Bend as far back as he can remember. His 90-year-old brother, Joe Leman, concurs.

These days, real estate maps of the area nearby — just west of the Sterling Highway, at about Milepost 126 — typically show a street called Corea Bend Road that curls along the southern edge of Corea Bend Subdivision. Some such maps may show and label tiny Corea Creek, but they will not show Corea Bend itself.

In his 1971 Dictionary of Alaska Place Names, Donald J. Orth offers a specific entry for Corea Creek — including its origin dating back to a 19th-century shipwreck in the area — but does not even mention Corea Bend.

And Alaska historian Robert N. DeArmond, who founded the Alaska Northwest Publishing Company, wrote in the 1970s that Corea Bend used to appear on local maps and charts but had been “unfortunately” omitted from more recent editions.

The reasons for this cartographical disappearance are unclear. Perhaps Corea Bend owes its vanishing act to its lack of geographical prominence, since it neither juts outward like Anchor Point nor sags inward like Chickaloon Bay. It is not even as clearly defined as the mile

-long Corea Creek near its northern head.

In fact — since the bulk of the shipwreck was likely pillaged early on by scavengers and then pulverized more than a century ago by the forces of ice and tide — the creek is the only named physical reminder of an incident that shook up the fledgling Cook Inlet cannery world 120 summers ago.

The three-masted wooden bark Corea was built in Boston in 1868, and she began making supply and passenger runs from San Francisco to Cook Inlet in the spring of 1885. On her fateful final voyage, she departed the California port on March 27, 1890, and nearly a month later she was cruising up the inlet when disaster struck.

In “thick weather” at about 3 a.m. on April 23, and running against a strong outgoing tide, according to the official Wreck Report filed for the ship’s owner, the Arctic Fishing Company, she ran hard aground of a sandbar approximately six miles south of Kalgin Island. There, below a landmark that on an 1802 map had been named Isla de Peligro (or “Island of Danger”), her voyage halted as the tide continued to ebb, and within a few hours she sat high and dry.

An 1890 photograph (from the H. M. Wetherbee Collection) taken of the Corea early the following morning shows her sails at half-mast, her hull almost entirely on dry land, men on her deck, the seas calm, and a stack of her coal and some other materials in two separa

This rectangular hole appears in about the middle of the remains of the old Corea shipwreck.

te piles alongside her keel.

This photo also clearly illustrates the impressive size of the vessel: 133.4 feet from bow to stern, 31.5 feet from port to starboard, and 18 feet deep. She weighed nearly 565 tons and had been carrying a cargo weighing about 500 tons — mostly coal, cannery tin and other cannery supplies — in addition to a 19-man crew and 97 passengers, 77 of whom were Chinese laborers bound for work at the Kasilof cannery, according to “Canneries of Kasilof and Kenai, 1889-1896,” a Wetherbee photographic display at Kenai Peninsula College.

After striking the sandbar, according to a May 1890 article in the Daily Alta California, “the crew and Chinese passengers were put to work at the pumps.” The ship’s master, Captain H.H. Wheeler, then waited for the tide to rise again and assessed the damage.

The Wreck Report states: “Got her off the reef and found the vessel was filling” — 12 feet of water in the hold, according to a notation on the Wetherbee photograph — “so ran her 25 miles in sinking condition to East shore of Cook’s Inlet and beached her.”

Wetherbee photos of the second beaching site clearly show that the vessel rammed ashore at the mouth of what would

A portion of a metal object found near the ship remains features slots that perhaps once held ropes.

become known as Corea Creek, about 15 miles south of the canneries on the Kasilof River. One of those photos also shows shipwrecked passengers and crew from the Corea encamped along the shoreline near the creek mouth.

At this camp, according to oral history collected by Bobbie Oskolkoff, of Kenai, was Oskolkoff’s great-grandfather, Robert James Kelly, who at some point walked north with a group of the Chinese laborers to the Arctic Fishing Company cannery at the Kasilof River mouth.

Although these men were likely seeking employment, it is unknown what they found. Because of the wreck, AFC did no canning in the summer of 1890. A second Kasilof cannery was built that same year by George W. Hume. According to the KPC display, the Hume cannery became the primary operation in Cook Inlet that year because of the shipwreck of the Corea.

Articles in both the Daily Alta and the San Francisco Call from the summer of 1890 state that, after the beaching, nearly every movable item on the

Photos courtesy of the Alaska and Polar Regions Archives of UAF. The Arctic Fishing Company’s cannery at the mouth of the Kasilof River in about 1890. This cannery did not can any salmon in 1890 because of the wreck of the Corea.

ship was brought ashore and saved, and parts of the ship were dismantled.

“A survey was held on the bark and resulted in her being condemned. She was afterwards sold as she lay for $355,” said the Daily Alta. The Call referred to the sale as an “auction” and said that both “the cargo and hull” were sold together.

According to two separate articles in the Daily Alta, most of the crew and passengers, all of whom survived, were eventually rescued by another member of the AFC fleet, the steamer Francis Cutting, which hauled the men to Kodiak.

At some point in May, the steamer Bertha carried Captain Wheeler, Chief Mate Oliver, the second mate and two seamen from the Corea back to San Francisco. Some of the rest of the “crew and fishermen” from the Corea were returned to San Francisco later that summer aboard the schooner Glen.

Men from the shipwrecked Corea stand around in their isolated camp near the mouth of what later became known as Corea Creek. Most of the nearly 100 passengers on board the Corea had been heading for a summer of labor canning salmon on the Kasilof River.

Ultimately, as stated in the Wreck Report and attested to by AFC owner/manager F.P Kendall, insurance covered most of the losses — except those incurred by the cannery. The vessel had been valued at $15,000 and insured for $12,500, and its cargo had been valued at $45,000 and insured for $41,600.

Today, only one remnant of the Corea is still known to exist. Although it has been shoved south along the shoreline far from its original resting place, and can be seen only when the tides along Corea Bend are quite low, the approximately 80 feet of waterlogged beams serve as a reminder of both the power of nature and the importance of this local historical event.

Someday, however, the wearing actions of tide and time may erode the last bits of the old wooden bark, the name of the tiny stream at the wreck site may fade from all maps and charts, as did the stretch of beach, and the wreck of the Corea will become little more than an interesting factoid glimpsed by researchers studying the history of Cook Inlet fisheries.

Photos by Clark Fair, Redoubt Reporter. This view of the Corea wreck remains shows the east-side beach looking south toward Ninilchik.

Beluga issue nets large reply — Critical habitat testimony stretches into the thousands

By Naomi Klouda

Homer Tribune

The testimony on whether or not to designate most of Cook Inlet as beluga habitat is now in, with some 91,668 responses to the public comment period that ended March 3.

The comments will be available to the public shortly at the National Marine Fisheries Service Web site, said spokesperson Sheela McLean. It is important to note that the number of responses didn’t calculate how many made repeat testimony. However, the numbers from organizations were noted, with Sierra Club accounting for 43,339 responses. The Natural Resource Development Council — countering the idea of designating Cook Inlet as critical habitat — weighed in with 39,939 responses.

NMFS counted 10 responses from North Star Terminal and Stevedore Co., LLC, which operates the Port of Anchorage, and 219 from postcard mailings. It also received 13 “unknown” letters and received 7,500 from a signature petition.

The NMFS is expecting to issue its decision sometime in October, McLean said.

Here is a sampling of commentary that came from residents in Homer and/or the Kenai Peninsula:

• Roland Maw of the United Cook Inlet Drift Association: “It became apparent to us as an industry that belugas were declining 15 or more years ago. NMFS came to us as a group, and to the set net group, and asked us if we would have some observers on board our vessels and you have the results of that. We had observers to the tune of about 9,000 hours on our vessels and beaches. There were no sightings, no entanglements and certainly no deaths. We have been trying to be proactive, even though our government hasn’t been … This is a difficult problem to work through but we’ll get through it and we’ll be OK.”
• Ken Tarbox, Soldotna: “I worked from 1980 to 2000 for Fish and Game. In that capacity, I flew over Cook Inlet and observed whales. I support the critical habitat designation identified, with a couple of exceptions. One, it is not far enough up the Susitna River. The whales would go much further up the Susitna River than what is designated. Two is the Kenai River. Even recently, since 2000, I’ve seen whales moving two to three miles up from the bridge. I assure you the lower Kenai is still used by belugas. I’ve seen as many as 30 in there in the spring and in the fall. Where we are not seeing them is during the July period when we historically used to see them.”
• Harold Shepherd, director Center for Water Advocacy: “I am here to testify in support of proposed designation of critical habitat for beluga on behalf of our members, which includes native villages and tribal governments in Alaska including the Marine Mammal Council and the Eklutna, Kenaitze, Chickaloon, Ninilchik, Seldovia and Tyonek tribes… Many tribal organizations can be of significant assistance in implementation and support in helping keep the belugas from jeopardy.”
• Beaver Nelson: “I have lived here since 1965. As a commercial fisherman I’ve spent a lot of time in Kachemak Bay and have observed belugas. Up until mid 1980’s there was a group of belugas that would come in every fall. All through October they appeared to feed on smelt (little wiggling clouds you could see in the grass). There would be 40-50 belugas in that area steadily. In mid to late 1980’s the belugas began to disappear. They were gone in a two to three year period to where there just weren’t belugas there anymore. You very rarely saw orcas back then, but in the late 1980’s the orcas became way more common. Even now if you go up in October you will see orcas up there hunting seal. My feeling is belugas are a candy bar for orca. They found a good food source and drove the belugas out of there. It is a risky venture for a beluga to move through there to run a gauntlet of orcas which seem to be increasing in abundance.”