Region V Activities
Dear Editor: Thank you from Mt. Edgecumbe and Sitka High School!
The Region V Holland America/Alaska Airlines 234A Basketball Tournament was held in the B.J. McGillis Gymnasium on Japonski Island March 5-9. Over 650 high school students from around the Panhandle participated in basketball, cheerleading, dance and pep band. Tagging along were a few hundred parents and fans. This phenomenal tournament is the largest regional basketball tournament in Alaska and also the largest multi-day event hosted in Sitka. An event this size takes teamwork between Sitka High and Mt. Edgecumbe High.
Thank you again to all the Sitka families able to house students and thank you to SHS Activities Director Rick Krupa for coordinating it. Special thanks to the following for donating their personal homes: LaVonne Grun, Valorie and Conner Nelson, Shasta and Gary Smith, Kelly Pellett, Dave Nelson and all of the Sitka churches.
Thank you also to the businesses and volunteers that contributed time and money to help continue making this event the premier high school basketball tournament around Alaska: Holland America, Alaska Airlines, Westmark, SEARHC, Avis, Sitka Bottling, Allen Marine, Sea Mart, Agave, Subway, Island Bus Company, Kris Pearson and Malo’s Janitorial.
Thanks to our many volunteers at the door; Linda Blankenship, Rose Demmert, Jami Roberts, Georjeana Wallace, KathyHope Erickson, Rachael Kirby, Mike Vieira, Matt Burrows, Chuck Haskins, Luke Clayton, Tyler McCarty, National Guard Sgt. Justin Mullenix and Sgt. Mario Morales, Young Life volunteers led by Aaron Routen, UAS volunteers led by Joy Klushkan. Thanks to our EMT Craig Warren, Alex Weissberg, Jessica Twydell, Matt Hunter and our physical therapy crew Alicia Haseltine, Mark Kasprowicz, Eric Speck and Gio Villanueva.
A huge thanks to our girls wrestling team and Student Council spending countless hours helping out and cleaning up throughout the week. Thank you, Klas Stolpe, for the above and beyond two pages of coverage in the Sitka Sentinel!
A few key folks who make the difference behind the scenes in this tournament: Shirley Perkins and Paula Clayton for organizing and running a great hospitality room. Mary-Alice Henry and Devyn Peters for running a smooth and efficient front gate. Bernie Gurule for playing the tambourine. Keith Perkins for announcing 30 games and LieuDell Goldsberry for co-directing and taking care of all the details.
It truly is a team effort from both schools and the community to make this event happen every three years. I encourage everyone to continue supporting the schools which positively impacts future generations and our economy.
Andrew Friske, MEHS Residential/Activities Principal
Sentinel Reporting
Dear Editor: I want to thank Sentinel staff member Klas Stolpe for the excellent coverage of Region V basketball tourney.
His Pure Sole article and selected pictures really brought things full circle (Tuesday, March 5).
Also the daily coverage, which I really enjoyed for their soul and grit.
Good work, Klas, and thanks go to the Sentinel for letting his talents shine.
John Murray, Sitka
Sac Roe Herring
Dear Editor: As I’ve been reviewing the historic record of the sac roe herring fishery, I’ve come to doubt the basis by which ADFG claims that their data demonstrates healthy herring populations.
ADFG’s key indicator of herring population health is the biomass of the spawning herring around Sitka. The problem that I’m finding in the management record is that the science hasn’t always been directed toward the same purpose, hasn’t always been accomplished using through the same methods, and hasn’t always been studied with the same intensity or even within the same area.
This becomes a big deal when ADFG’s low historic biomass measurements form the primary defense of the sustainability of the fishery. Every Board of Fish meeting in the last few decades has featured an ADFG biologist standing in front of a biomass chart that features extremely low numbers through the 1970s, rising sharply in 1979, and continuing to rise, generally, through 2010. Though the numbers have fallen considerably since 2010, ADFG biologists are able to use their data to make their point that the biomass has generally risen since the dawn of the fishery. Standing in front of departmental data, they discredit local testimony with their science.
When they do this – as they did as recently as the 2018 Board of Fish meeting – ADFG grossly misrepresents and misuses their own data. This is because the ADFG biomass estimates for most of the 1970’s solely represents the wintering stock in Katlian Bay. In the 1970’s, ADFG’s goal was to basically conduct a feasibility study around how to estimate herring the size of discrete herring stocks; comprehensive region-wide biomass assessment was a distant goal. They were operating an experimental fishery with experimental science, and they were very conscious of that. Their research papers are riddled with admissions that their experimental studies were inadequate and deeply limited. One of these admissions appears in a 1980 ADFG herring research paper: “Biomass assessments which are conducted by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) on major stocks do not account for small discrete stocks found in most of Southeastern bays.”
Departmental research reports from 1974 and 1975 make it clear that even nearby Nakwasina Sound was considered to be a different stock of herring than the Katlian Bay herring. As such, the Nakwasina herring weren’t figured into the biomass estimates for “Sitka Sound” which came out of those years. Jim Parker, the ADFG management biologist at the time, wrote an LTE (April 23, ’75) to the Sitka Sentinel confirming this, saying, “There were also smaller schools of herring found in Nakwasina sound and Silver Bay, which were not included in this survey.”
Another example: A few years later in 1978, the sac roe harvest quota was slashed from 1,450 to 250 tons when ADFG decided to fish in Eastern Channel instead of near Katlian. Since they didn’t have information about the Eastern Channel herring, which they considered to be of a different stock than their study population, they decided not to fish the Katlian quota there.
That’s... not how things go anymore. Gone are the days of departmental concern about discrete stocks. Last year, ADFG’s biomass estimates for “Sitka Sound” herring were derived from thorough surveys ranging all the way from Salisbury Sound to Shelikof Bay to Crawfish Inlet. That isn’t the same thing as experimental research in Katlian Bay; it isn’t even close. And yet, year after year, as the study area has steadily expanded, ADFG has made direct comparisons between the old data and the new data. It makes the new data look awfully good. It also makes it easy for Board of Fish members to dismiss the very legitimate concerns of tribal members, fishermen, and other local observers. It doesn’t sound like safe science to me.
Peter Bradley, Sitka
