Sandy Mazen is a familiar face to many Homer area residents. He is a longtime member of the Coast Guard Auxilliary and for many years taught the local auxiliary chapter’s Safe Boating classes.

Born in Teller, Alaska in 1928, Mazen graduated from Nome High School in 1946. At ninety-one years old, Mazen is now retired and has published a memoir,  Kiyonuk  An Arctic Alaska Boyhood. He stopped by KBBI studios yesterday for a chat with Kathleen Gustafson, beginning with a two minute reading from  Kiyonuk.

Even on a slow day, the Homer Boat Harbor is a busy place. But if you are captaining one of the many 100-plus-foot vessels berthed there, navigating in water that is barely deep enough while avoiding dozens of small skiffs as you turn around, it’s far from ideal.

Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands pelagic trawlers caught 312 king salmon in the week beginning June 15, bringing the total for the month of June to 1411.  During the same week, non-pelagic, or bottom trawlers caught 176 kings, according to data from onboard observers overseen by the National Marine Fisheries Service, (NMFS). June’s king salmon bycatch in the bottom trawl fishery to date is 762.  There was no reported salmon bycatch in the pot, jig, and non-halibut longline fisheries.  

Homer is hosting its second annual pride walk this weekend. The walk will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which helped launch an LGBTQ rights movement. 

In light of the upcoming event, KBBI invited two Homer residents, Mary Jo Cambridge and Falcom Greear, to interview each other about pride. 

The Southern District of Lower Cook Inlet, which includes Kachemak Bay, opened to seiners this Monday, June 17, with sixteen-hour openers scheduled for Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  The Alaska Department of Fish and Game reported Monday’s salmon harvest as four Chinook and 110 sockeye on four deliveries, all from the China Poot section. Sections with fewer than three deliveries are not included in public reports.

When it comes to gravel pits on the Kenai Peninsula, there’s not much that property owners and pit operators can agree upon. But many are on the same page about one thing: they don’t like the changes that are being proposed to the current codes governing material sites.

Hans Bilben is stepping out on his deck in Anchor Point, which oversees acres of a forest and a nearby beach. He said he spends a lot of time out here and worries that a proposed gravel pit could change the view—a lot.

  The National Marine Fisheries Service reports a total halibut bycatch for the first two weeks of June of 506,747 pounds in all groundfish fisheries in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands management areas, excluding the halibut and sablefish longline fisheries.   Total halibut mortality for the month so far is 460,457 pounds for a mortality rate of just under ninety-one percent.

Pakiutentut  -  They are busy

Pakiutentut kiagmi.

Translation:
They are busy during the summer.

The University of Alaska Anchorage hired a new chancellor late last year. Cathy Sandeen was in town for the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference and talked with KBBI’s Renee Gross on Monday about her priorities for the university system.