COURTESY RICHARD BRAHM/U.S. COAST GUARD.

Aircraft Repairs Complicate Island Life

THE 130 RESIDENTS of Little Diomede Island can see Russia from their houses, but they can’t see mainland Alaska 30 miles away, and they can’t get there very easily either.

Last summer, weekly helicopter service that takes mail to the village stopped flying passengers to nearby Wales and Nome, leaving some residents stranded away from home and others unable to get to medical appointments in Nome, the Anchorage Daily News said.

Passenger flights were suspended because the aviation company that serves Little Diomede discovered several repairs were necessary on the freight helicopter and replaced it with a smaller aircraft that could not carry passengers.

A Little Diomede council member, in Nome for a meeting when the flight service was suspended, waited a month for a boat ride back home and a group of teachers headed to Little Diomede by boat to start the school year waited 16 hours on a boat before conditions were calm enough to allow them to land, the Daily News said. Ocean conditions are often too rough to make the 30-mile crossing to Nome, and fixedwing aircraft can land only in winter, and then only when ice conditions are smooth enough to allow residents to build a runway.

The regional health authority stepped in to help transport residents to medical appointments until regular passenger service was restored. Looking for a longterm solution to the transportation crisis, Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, wrote a letter to Gov. Sean Parnell suggesting the state and federal governments split the cost of subsidized passenger flights to the village in future.

A one-way helicopter ride on the weekly flight between Little Diomede and Nome sells for $320. Fixed-wing planes, which offer slightly cheaper flights, can usually start landing on the sea ice after freeze-up, giving residents more travel options, but some winters, building a runway is impossible.

Frozen Fish Is Greener, Group Claims

	SERINE HALVERSON

FROZEN SALMON is better for the planet than fresh, because it takes less energy to reach your dinner plate. That’s the finding of an Oregon organization named Ecotrust, which funds environmentally conscious businesses and projects, according to the The Oregonian newspaper.

Ecotrust studied how sustainable it is to catch fish, refrigerate them and fly them to markets around the world compared to flashfreezing fish at sea and shipping them to market by truck or rail. Fresh fish may taste better, but transporting frozen fish uses significantly less fossil fuel.

The study also looked at how a fish is caught, and reported that Alaska salmon caught by a purse seiner has a lower environmental impact than salmon caught by trolling. And wild fish is more environmentally friendly than farmed fish because captive fish eat forage fish—which some conservationists say would be better fed directly to people—or they are fed corn and soy, which are intensive, industrial agriculture crops, requiring fuel for production and harvest, The Oregonian said.

The report concluded that container ships are the most environmentally friendly mode of transporting food around the world, and if 75 percent of the salmon eaten in the world was frozen salmon, that would have a greater positive impact on the environment than if all of Europe ate locally farmed salmon.

BARROW

COURTESY BRIDGET EDWARDSON

YOUNGEST WHALER STRIKES BOWHEAD

A FOURTH-GRADER became the youngest Alaska Native in memory to kill a whale when he delivered the killing blow to a 32-foot bowhead near Barrow last fall.

Nine-year-old Paul Patkotak was on his uncle’s whaling boat and was allowed to participate in the hunt because he had shown such a strong work ethic as an apprentice member of the whaling crew during the spring hunt, the Anchorage Daily News said.

Patkotak’s uncle harpooned the whale using a darting gun, but neither the initial blow nor a follow-up shot killed the bowhead. Patkotak then launched a third strike with an 8-foot-long, 30-pound harpoon from a distance of about a foot to dispatch the animal.

After the whale was butchered and meat was shared with the community, Patkotak’s family took home hundreds of pounds of meat in reward for his work.

Barrow’s Inupiat hunters have an annual quota of 22 bowhead whales. A 15-year-old relative of Patkotak previously held the record of the youngest hunter in Barrow.

BIG LAKE

SERINE HALVERSON.

MUSHER GETS ELEPHANT-SIZE TREADMILL

MAGGIE, AN 8,000-POUND AFRICAN ELEPHANT, left the Alaska Zoo in 2007 after public protests against keeping a lone elephant in captivity in a cold climate made national news. After she was transferred to the Performing Animals Welfare Society compound in California, Alaska Zoo officials faced another conundrum: what to do with the 22-foot-long treadmill they specially ordered for Maggie a few years ago in an attempt to get the lethargic elephant exercising.

Big Lake dog musher Martin Buser immediately saw a use for it and moved it 60 miles from Anchorage to Happy Trails Kennels, housing it in a specially designed building named Maggie’s. The zoo reportedly spent $100,000 on the treadmill, but Buser got it for free—although he did pay moving costs—and has since named the Alaska Zoo as one of his official sponsors.

Buser is hoping to exercise his dogs on the treadmill when conditions outside don’t favor a long run, and to offer researchers an indoor location to study running dog teams.

NOORVIK

Village Lifts Ban on Dancing

UNTIL RECENTLY, if you lived in the western Alaska village of Noorvik, you were forbidden to dance. But last September, the Noorvik elder’s council and Noorvik Friends Church representatives voted to lift the ban on traditional Native dancing in Noorvik, the Arctic Sounder newspaper reported.

Dancing was banned there because missionaries in the early 1900s associated it with shamanism by the church.

The ban was lifted because Noorvik was to be the first town in the United States to be counted in the national census. A high-profile event that included visits from members of congress and national media was planned to celebrate the count, and residents wanted to have Native dancing as part of the celebration.

A dance troupe from Kotzebue flew in to train locals in the traditional art form, which will now be part of the local school curriculum.

LONDON

Brits Not Fans of Moose Dish

A NEWSPAPER IN BRITAIN, a country known around the world for its, shall we say, “interesting” cuisine, recently held a competition that some might consider an example of the pot calling the kettle black: a call for the world’s worst recipes. The Times of London asked readers to submit recipes from cookbooks new and old. And one of the finalists was a traditional Alaska dish.

The recipe for moose nose—jellied or boiled—from Out of Alaska’s Kitchens (fifth edition, 1961) caught the eye of the judges. The dish is made by dipping a moose nose in scalding water and scraping the hair off, then boiling the meat until tender and seasoning it with salt, pepper and garlic. It is best served cold in its broth, which the recipe says will be jellied.

Also in true Alaska tradition, another contender was the mock crown roast from the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook of 1949, made with Spam and an orange marmalade glaze—with a serving suggestion of boiled asparagus and pineapple spears skewered with cherries.

The winning recipe could easily be made from Alaska resources as well— baked fish fingers from How to Cheat at Cooking, published in 1971:

Baked Fish Fingers

• 14 ounces frozen fish fingers
• salt and freshly milled black pepper
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 6½ ounce can of tomatoes, drained
• 1 medium-size onion, sliced thinly
• 7½ ounce can grilled mushrooms
• 2 ounces cheddar cheese, grated
• butter

Pre-heat oven to 350 F. Butter a baking dish and arrange the fish in it. Season and sprinkle on the lemon juice. Cover the fish fingers with tomatoes, onions and mushrooms. Sprinkle with the grated cheese and put a few dabs of butter here and there. Bake for 20-25 minutes. And enjoy!

IOWA

ECONOMIST: ALASKA A POOR DEAL

	PHOTO ILLUSTRATION JIM DORONDO, PHOTO STEVE MCSWEENY/ BIGSTOCKPHOTO.COM

MOST AMERICANS—including representatives of the U.S. Government—are taking a close look at how they spend their money these days, and one U.S. economist recently suggested that the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867 was a poor investment that the country should never have made; The U.S. spent $7.2 million in gold to buy the land at the urging of William H. Seward, Pres. Andrew Johnson’s Secretary of State—a purchase famously called Seward’s Folly.

The money from oil, gold, salmon and other natural resources—not to mention the beauty of Alaska’s wilderness—won over most people, but a new analysis by a University of Iowa economist suggests the investment hasn’t been worth it for U.S. taxpayers. David Barker, an economist and adjunct professor of finance at the Tippie College of Business, said the economic benefits that have been received from Alaska over the years could have been obtained without purchasing the territory, according to newswise.com, and the cost to govern the area and build the infrastructure to access its resources has been far greater than the benefit of Alaska’s resources. Baker calculated that the state has cost the federal government $13.4 million in 1867 dollars, which translates to a $16.5 billion loss in today’s dollars, adjusting for the size of the economy, newswise.com said.

Profits from oil and other resources have never offset that amount and no state collects more federal aid than Alaska today.

Barker also acknowledged that Alaska has been helpful strategically to the United States, but points out that, had the United States had not purchased Alaska, Great Britain would have acquired it and made it a part of Canada and Americans still would have had access to Alaska’s resources at a much lower overall cost.