"Kodiak Island"

While the city of Kodiak has relatively reliable alternatives for transportation to mainland Alaska, an upcoming gap in ferry service will pose serious difficulties for the some of the island’s outlying villages.

Artifacts sometimes end up in attics or storage boxes miles away from their places of origin. That was the case for one object that started on Kodiak Island and found itself in Soldotna many years later.

Kodiak Island’s rocket launch facility was one of the players in a missile defense test this week. The Alaska Aerospace Corporation is in a multi-year agreement with the U.S. Department of Defense Missile Defense Agency for a maximum of $80.4 million, according to Alaska Aerospace CEO Craig Campbell.

Terns are having a difficult year, said Robin Corcoran, a bird biologist for Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge. Some of the terns have been noncommittal and aren’t nesting yet, she said. When they do breed, she said crows, red foxes, magpies and brown bears are some of the predators that snack on their eggs.

A local archaeologist says there may be the remains of a historic Alutiiq fish trap on the north end of Kodiak Island. Those types of man-made formations are rare to discover in the region, he said.

Homer City Council passed a resolution on Aug. 8, formally requesting changes to U.S. Navy training exercises in the Gulf of Alaska. The proposed training area is 24 nautical miles from the Kenai Peninsula shoreline, just south of Prince William Sound and east of Kodiak Island.

There used to be hundreds of seafood canneries all along Alaska’s coastline. Two people are involved in documenting and preserving some of that rich history in order to share it with others. KFSK’s Angela Denning reports from Petersburg:

The Kodiak Island Borough has the highest rent in the state. That’s according to a publication from the Alaska Department of Labor & Workforce Development.

Reports of bird carcasses along Kodiak’s shores started in April and May. By August things had gotten worse.

One scientist suspects the whales may have ingested a toxin which led to their deaths.