May Executive Director's Report

As usual, spring has turned out to be our busiest time of year.  There's a lot going on and I didn't report last month (too busy), so let's get started:


Our second annual Kodiak Outdoor Film Festival was a success, drawing over 265 people for an evening of great entertainment.  Local filmmakers Shane Onders and Kathryn Symmes took home top honors, and all the videos had the standing-room only crowd cheering, laughing, and yelling for more.   For ITN staff and board members, the best part of the night is meeting and greeting all of our loyal supporters (But we can say that partly because we get to see all the films in advance during the selection process).  ITN thanks our members, volunteers, and many sponsors for making the Outdoor Film Fest a Kodiak institution. 

We have a full slate of activities and events scheduled for this summer.   Something is going on nearly every weekend this month.  In the interests of space, we have not listed them all here, but you can check out all ITN happenings on our website calendar.

This month saw a host of grant applications come back--all approved!  Here is a taste of what ITN will be doing in the new few years.

We received a legislative grant to construct 2600' of hiking trail on municipal land located on Near Island in the city of Kodiak, Alaska. This one will go right alongside the channel, teeing off an existing trail in North End park and contouring the hillside to the city parking lot near the St. Herman harbor launch ramp.  We believe (and often say) that a robust system of trails on Near Island serves the recreational needs and provides healthy alternatives to automobile travel for all members of the community. By providing hiking experiences easily accessible from downtown this trail in particular will add to the visitor experience and provide an economic return to the city of Kodiak. We can't take credit for the idea though.  This trail was first proposed in a 1987 Near Island Comprehensive Development plan adopted by the City of Kodiak and the Kodiak Island Borough. In 2011 City of Kodiak renewed their commitment by passing a resolution (2011-34) specifically supporting Near Island Phase III.

We've also received a small grant to "clear the way" for the coming bike path.  As you may know, $3.1M has been allotted for the design and construction of Phase 1A which will span from Kodiak Pier 2 to Deadman's Curve. Phase 1B of the bike path will span from Deadman's Curve to the USCG base and will closely parallel Rezanof Drive but may depart from the D.O.T. right-of-way (ROW) where (1) the trail can service nearby population centers, business and recreational areas or (2) natural terrain features and drainages render ten-foot trail corridor impractical. A paved bike path is a large public works project, and something beyond our means to construct.  But as the project is likely to take years to complete, we have offered to punch through and make some soft-surface trail improvements to make the half-finished trail usable in the intervening years. 

We received a legislative grant to resurface an existing 800' trail linking residents and businesses of Marine Way to Mission Road via Father Herman St. The trail resides entirely on City of Kodiak land and enjoys frequent use by downtown residents, dog-walkers, hikers and those seeking a nearby refuge from nearby industrial zones.  This 6-foot widened tread will allow for comfortable two way foot traffic and slow two-way bicycle traffic. Increased use and lack of proper drainage has caused incising along the tread and led to ponding and muddy conditions along the trail. The resurfacing project will incorporate natural and artificial drainage features such as outslope, crowning and grade dips to ensure adequate drainage.

To round out the list of "terra trail" grants, we received funding to make improvements to a short  trail that links residents of Sharatin Drive and adjacent subdivisions to the Trinity Islands subdivision via the Perenosa Drive right-of-way. Parts of Perenosa were platted decades ago but never fully developed as a street (that's why you never hear of Perenosa Drive except through ITN). In the ensuing years, some forgot about the right-of-way and thought of it as their backyard, while others used it to shortcut to nearby neighborhoods.  The construction of a backyard fence in the Perenosa right-of-way in 2010 brought the purpose of ROWs into sharp focus.  Were they intended for streets and public utilities only, reverting back to the adjacent landowners if utilities and streets weren't needed?  Or did they retain their public value as conduits for moving people on bikes, on foot and in strollers through a maze of dead-end streets built for automobiles?  After public review, the KIB Planning and Zoning commission and KIB Parks & Recreation committee chose the latter, and we are following up by improving the trail to meet the current use patterns.

We continue to make conservation of our coastlines and watersheds, and have had some recent fundraising successes here as well.

ITN was awarded a grant this month from the Marine Conservation Alliance Foundation for marine debris clean-ups at Halibut Bay, Long Island, continuation of our incentive program for set net fisherman, and project to remove derelict crab pots from Womens Bay.  We also received a grant from NOAA to conduct seven weeks of marine debris clean-up at Tugidak island in 2013.  This will be our largest single clean-up yet, and is focused on the heaviest concentration of debris we’ve found on the Kodiak archipelago.  Together, these grants account for a significant increase in our efforts at coastal conservation over the next two years, which seems like good timing—the impact of marine debris from the 2011 Japan tsunami is just beginning to be felt here.

There has been extensive media coverage of marine debris caused by the tsunami, mostly as a human-interest piece.  The autographed soccer ball on Middleton Island which was traced and returned to a Japanese youth and the Harley Davidson motorcycle that washed up in British Columbia both made national headlines.  An anchorage network affiliate picked upon a local effort to map the appearances of team-logo fly swatters from Kodiak to Montague island near Prince William Sound.  These flyswatters, novel are they are, are most likely not related to the tsunami.  Rather, they along with the hundreds of customized water bottles, and miniature foam basketballs are the contents of a container spill from a passing freighter.  ITN President Patrick Saltonstall first blogged about them after a deer carcass survey on the west side of Kodiak, only later discovering that the phenomenon has spread over hundreds of miles of coastline.The curious absence of any of these sports novelty items from locations east of PWS or in southeast Alaska suggests they arrived by different means than the large plastic oyster floats and polystyrene cylinders that have impacted the entire state. 

Regarding these larger, latter types of debris, they started showing up by ones and twos in Alaska in late 2011.  Kodiak first reported finding these large, apparently foreign objects in a late December KMXT article, but the majority of reports on the SeaAlliance facebook page, which was launched by MCAF to monitor tsunami debris findings, were coming from Yakutat. 

Around April 20, Kodiak pilot Dave Hilty flew his personal plane from Sitka to Kodiak after working as a herring spotter.  He passed Cape Fairweather, Icy Strait, Middleton and Montague Islands and finally Shuyak, Afognak and Kodiak island for his return home.  Hilty told me that he’d flown this route for many years, and always seen one or two oyster floats per year along the way.  This year he began counting soon after taking off from Southeast Alaska, noticing right away an increase in debris levels.  Then he began counting by twenties.  In all he estimates he saw 4000 floats along his flight path.  

On April 26 Nick flew with Hilty to look more closely at the Kodiak archipelago and found dozens of oyster floats scattered around Shuyak and north Afognak islands.  The numbers were lesser in quantity than HIlty observed around Montague island and the north gulf coast but far more than we would normally see here.  On May 3^rdNick and I traveled by kayak from Monaskha Bay to Anton Larsen Bay to inspect our work sites and counted two tsunami debris pieces--one rigid black one at Termination Point and one polystyrene white one near Kizhuyak Point.  Passing Ouzinkie we saw Herman Squartsoff, who first reported the flyswatters to me back in March, and he told us he’d found 28 more. 

The flyswatter epidemic and the tsunami-generated Oyster floats may be from different sources, but they all signify an increasing amount of marine debris washing up.  ITN will continue to monitor and document these sightings to target future clean-ups and to make the case, if needed, for additional funding to protect our shores.