In most visitors, Alaska inspires wonder at its beauty, awe at its wildlife, and admiration for the hardiness of those who make their lives in its vast backcountry, enduring some of the harshest conditions on earth.
Alaska
It’s time to consider finfish farming in Alaska • Alaska Beacon
In the heat of debate over salmon farming, Alaska banned all finfish farming, except for a very narrow window for goldfish and other pet store varieties. As Alaska seeks ways to diversify its economy, it is time to rethink the overreach of the ban. Here’s a modest proposal that could result in small-scale, affordable enterprises utilizing existing renewable resources.
Under our proposal, no saltwater farming would be allowed, and the amended law would specifically prohibit rearing of Pacific and Atlantic salmon in fresh water. These measures should remove the concerns raised by commercial fishermen and environmental groups during the debate over salmon farming.
Also prevented would be the farming of commercial species such as halibut and black cod in upland tanks. While arctic char is a distant cousin of salmon, farmed and wild caught char does not compete in the markets for salmon. Most of Canada’s production of char is consumed in country. Iceland is the leading producer of char, which is consumed mostly in northern Europe.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program promotes farmed Arctic char as an environmentally sustainable best choice for consumers, stating: “Arctic char use only a moderate amount of marine resources for feed” and that they “are farmed in land-based, closed systems that minimize the risk of escape into the wild.” The farming of freshwater finfish, such as arctic char, sheefish, rainbow trout and even tilapia, in upland tanks or enclosed lakes or ponds could provide jobs and increase food security without harming the environment or threatening wild stocks. Unlike the drive to expand oil and gas production and large-scale mining working with multinational corporations which reap most of the benefits, freshwater fish farming could appeal more to smaller Alaska-owned businesses.
How fish farming can be no threat
Alaska clearly has an abundance of freshwater resources, and experience in Alaska’s premier state hatchery and a Whitehorse fish farm show that arctic char and sheefish prefer cool rearing waters. In addition, arctic char and sheefish can be raised in high densities without experiencing significant problems with disease.
Icy Waters near Whitehorse has farmed arctic char for about three decades and has found the preferred water temperature is below 12 C (53.6 F) and the fish could survive and feed in water temperatures as low as 1 C (33.8 F). Icy Waters also experimented with keeping char in a lake over winter and found that the fish could survive under winter ice without feeding until spring.
The experience of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s William Jack Hernandez Sportfish Hatchery in Anchorage in raising char is like Icy Waters. Both facilities have found char:
- are calm and non-aggressive;
- prefer densities of 50-70 kilograms per cubic meter (110-154 pounds per cubic meter of water) and can survive in densities of more than 200 pounds per cubic meter of water (these are much higher than salmon);
- can survive high density rearing, prefer cool waters and experience very low rates of disease (no medications or chemical treatments are used at either facility); and
- the species have high fecundity (4-5,000 eggs/female in Alaska and up to 10,000 eggs in older females held in Icy Waters).
While there is less experience with sheefish, the Hernandez hatchery shows the species also can survive high-density rearing, prefers cool waters and experiences low rates of disease.
Arctic char is an important commercial and subsistence species across Siberia, Alaska, Canada, Iceland and Scandinavia. Estimated global production of farmed char ranges between 6,000-10,000 tons. Recent online U.S. prices for char range from $17 to $28 per pound.
Char and sheefish appear to be particularly suitable for farming in northwestern Alaska waters. These are stocks that have long been a mainstay in the diets of Native residents in the areas hit so hard with the disappearance of salmon. The farms could provide revenues for the stocking of local streams and lakes, in addition to producing high-quality sources of protein.
Release of stocks will require production of triploid fish, which are considered functionally sterile.
All freshwater finfish farming will require a lot of work because farms will require hatchery status as access to wild stocks will be difficult and state agencies aren’t geared to help assist smaller-scale startups. Aquaculture enterprises throughout the world all require government support and encouragement to thrive.
Other species might have more obstacles than char and sheefish because most will require warmer rearing waters and may have more problems with disease, rainbow trout as an example.
Tilapia is a great partner for vertical aquaponics, or the growing of vegetables in water rather than soil. The combination of these two methods results in a mutually beneficial relationship where fish waste provides nutrients for the plants and the plants purify the water for the fish. The sale of tilapia could add an important source of revenue to the operation.
In the mid-1990s, a couple of young men approached an officer of the Alaskan Shellfish Growers Association and asked about Alaska’s ban on finfish farming as they had successfully raised tilapia in the basement of their Wasilla home. The officer told them changes in the law were unrealistic.
This may be the time to change the law, but it will require a lot of work in the deeply divided Legislature.
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Alaska
An Alaska vacation can remind Israelis the world doesn’t revolve around them | The Jerusalem Post
For Israelis, it can also inspire humility. Not because the Jewish state is smaller than Denali National Park, but because in Alaska, one is reminded that the world neither revolves around Israel nor is obsessed with it.
That realization came on a trip The Wife and I took to America’s Last Frontier last month.
“Where is your final destination today?” the woman checking us in for our flight home at the Anchorage airport asked chirpily.
“Tel Aviv,” I replied. “Where’s that?”
When I said it was in Israel, she smiled and said, “Oh.”
Lest one think this was just a fluke: on the plane a few hours later, another Alaskan asked where we were going. When we answered “Tel Aviv,” she said she had never heard of it.
Granted, two people do not a Pew Poll make, but they do offer a small corrective to the perception – fed by the media most of us follow – that the world is preoccupied with Israel, thinking about us obsessively, talking about us constantly, and cursing us unremittingly.
The last part, at least in Alaska, is also not true. During our two weeks there, we saw no “Free Palestine” graffiti, nor were we subjected to dirty looks or “child killer” comments when we said we were from Israel.
All of America, it turns out, is not Mamdani’s Manhattan, nor does social media present a proportionate picture of that country’s reality.
One of the problems with social media is that every incident of antisemitism is posted online. The incidents are real and rising at an alarming rate, but seeing them all in one place creates a disproportionate sense of how likely you are to encounter them while traveling.
Watch enough clips of a Jewish kid harassed on a New York subway or an Israeli couple berated at a hotel in California, and you begin to wonder whether the same thing awaits you when you ride an American subway or check into a hotel.
It doesn’t. Yet the cumulative effect is that you begin to wonder how open to be about your Israeliness. You don’t decide to hide it, but simply having to ask the question adds a mini-layer of apprehension before every trip.
When Israel comes along for the ride
You also learn to read the Uber.
“Honey,” I urged The Wife before we got into an Uber in Chicago during a brief layover, “you don’t have to say you’re from Israel.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “I’m not going to hide who I am.”
“Wonderful sentiment,” I replied. “The driver’s name is Rabah. Humor me.”
We didn’t volunteer our place of origin, nor did he ask.
But on the entire trip, that was the only time we consciously withheld that nugget of biographical information. Everywhere else, we proudly said we were from Israel – and it was fine. More than fine: it was often a conversation starter.
On a whale-watching excursion, we sat across from a young couple from China who work at Google. They were intrigued that we lived in Israel, and even more fascinated that we passed on the chicken sandwiches being served.
Instead of looking for sea creatures, The Wife spent a good part of the trip explaining why some of the fish in the sea we can eat and others we can’t.
“Honey,” I whispered at one point, a bit annoyed. “We didn’t pay all this money for you to give an introductory lecture on kashrut. Look for the damn puffins.”
Since October 7, another layer has been added to the anxiety of travel: whether your flight will be canceled at the drop of a ballistic missile.
One doesn’t just hop over to Alaska on a whim; it takes planning and a special occasion to justify the expense. For us, it was 40 years of wedded bliss, so we booked back in October after being warned that rental cars sell out months in advance.
We chose United. But just days after the war with Iran broke out, United – typically – canceled flights until mid-June, four days after our planned departure. We acted quickly – well, The Wife acted quickly – and switched to El Al. Still, it complicated the trip further.
Then came the more serious question: Do you leave the country when one of your sons or your son-in-law is in miluim in Lebanon, Gaza, or Syria?
My first instinct was no: you don’t leave when one of your children is serving. That may have worked before Oct. 7, when reserve duty meant a few weeks a year and could be planned around.
But today, when they have each logged upward of 350 days, saying you won’t leave while they are serving essentially means that you won’t leave at all.
Which, by the way, is hardly the end of the world. But what can I say? I like to travel.
So we went, even though as we were watching bears and sea otters, my youngest son was dodging drones in Lebanon.
“Go,” he said. “What are you going to be able to do by being here? And if, God forbid, something happens, you’ll come back.”
“That’s not the point,” I said. “How can we enjoy it if we are worrying about you?”
“You’ll figure out a way,” he teased.
And he was right. Sure, we worried, but less than if we were here. Distance, it turns out, has its advantages. I wasn’t glued to the news, tracking every development on his front.
Perhaps that was Alaska’s greatest gift. Not the calving glaciers, surfacing whales, or foraging bears, magnificent though they were. It was the realization that while Israel is the center of our world, it is not the center of everyone else’s. Every now and then, regaining that perspective is refreshing. ■
I’m typically pretty wordy. But just watch the video.
Disclaimer: Matt Addington is a professional. These bears grazed toward him from 100 yards away while he held tight. Do not try this ever, under any circumstances, or you will likely spend the rest of your time on this earth as bear poop.
Matt Addington is an incredible professional photographer, and I can say that from personal experience. He’s captured images of me in rough shape and somehow made them stunnin’. The Minnesota-based photographer and filmmaker has built a career telling outdoor stories, and his latest bear video proves he knows exactly where to point a camera.
Places like Katmai National Park in Alaska (where this video was taken) can offer unusually close encounters with brown bears, thanks in part to abundant food and tightly managed visitor access. That doesn’t make encounters like this casual or safe to imitate.
Addington is an extremely experienced outdoorsman, and he was photographing with professional guides Scott and Jackie Stone. For people hoping to photograph bears this way, a guided wildlife photography tour is one of the safest ways to do it. Do not try this in Yellowstone or your local national forest.
The bears were grazing nearly 100 yards away when the group set up. They stayed put as the animals continued feeding and gradually moved closer, resulting in some incredible footage and a once-in-a-lifetime photo.
I can only hope he wore his brown pants under his waders.
Alaska
Black bear breaks into Alaskan mall, eats a peach and relieves itself on floor before leaving: video
Can bearly believe it!
A black bear was caught on camera seemingly running errands at a local shopping mall in Anchorage, Alaska over the weekend.
The bear entered the commissary mall at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson around 9 a.m. Sunday, KTUU reported, citing a JBER spokesperson.
Wild footage shows the young cub strolling through the commissary’s automatic doors and exploring all that the mall had to offer.
The hungry bear stole and ate a piece of fruit before emptying its bowels on the hallway floor on its way out of the building.
Kory Godbout, who works at the barber shop on the military base, was waiting for his first customer of the day when he spotted the furry intruder traveling through the automatic doors.
“My coworker, who is cutting hair in front of me, she yelled, ‘Bear!’” Godbout recalled.
“And I looked up from my phone and the bear was walking into the barber shop right in front of me,” the barber said. “And we all ran into the break room and shut the door behind us.”
After a few minutes, Godbout and his coworkers emerged from the break room and followed the out-of-place bear into the commissary, where it took a peach from the grocery store and ate it.
The barber recalled that a few onlookers were “going big to try and scare” the bear out of the grocery store.
But all of a sudden, the black bear returned to the barber shop.
“By that time, we were able to run back to the shop and then lock the door,” Godbout said.
“And then we were watching him from the window and then that’s when he decided to, you know, use the restroom in the hallway.”
Officers from Conservation Law Enforcement attended the peculiar grizzly scene and were able to direct the wild animal towards a river and into the woods, according to the JBER spokesperson.
JBER’s wildlife program manager Colette Brandt said in a press release that the bear had triggered the automatic doors and that Sunday’s events were entirely incidental, KTUU reported.
While there has been a decline in bear-related calls since the military base installed bear-resistant dumpsters, seven bears have been put down at JBER for public safety over the past year.
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