icki presented preliminary 2012 fi-nancial highlights to the NSEDCboard of directors at a meeting lastweek in Nome.

Comparative figures for the previ-ous year are from the NSEDC 2011annual report.

NSEDC’s net assets before taxestotaled $165.9 million on Dec. 31,2012, compared to $152.9 million atthe end of 2011, a gain of about$13.1 million. Walicki said the com-pany’s investments in marketable se-curities yielded profits of about $8.7million last year compared to a flatperformance in 2011.

The company’s marketable secu-rities investment portfolio totaled$69.7 million at the end of 2011.Revenues increased by $6 million in2012, Walicki added. Revenuesfrom all sources totaled $43.7 mil-

lion at the end of 2011. NSEDC’s total assets (liabilities

and net assets) were $221.3 millionon Dec. 31, 2012, up from 186.2 mil-lion at the end of 2011. Liabilitiesincreased by about $21 million to atotal of $55.4 million in 2012, com-pared to liabilities of $33.3 million atthe end of 2011 and $20.7 million in2010. Walicki said the company’slong-term debt increased from $15.8million in 2011 to $35 million onDec. 31, 2012.

Walicki repeatedly said the com-pany’s preliminary 2012 financialfigures will be adjusted.

He noted that 2012 federal taxpayments are likely, adding that hewon’t know the amount until thecompany’s annual audit is completed

continued on page 6

VOLUME CXIII NO. 7 February 14, 2013

Photo by Rhoda Nanouk

Photo by Diana HaeckerPROPOSED MARINE HIGHWAY— U.S. Coast Guard Commander James Houck presented a proposed high-way corridor through the Bering Strait at last week’s Bering Strait Maritime Symposium in Nome.

PAUL JOHNSON MEMORIAL SLED DOG RACE— Aaron Burmeister arrives in Unalakleet from Kaltag during last week’s Paul Johnson Memorial sled dog race.

Council mulls changein election rules

By Sandra L. MedearisThe Nome Common Council

made final on Feb. 11 a sale of landto Bonanza Fuel Inc.

The distributor will use the ap-proximately four acres at the northend of the port industrial area to ex-pand its adjacent tank farm. BFI willpay the market value of the land, asverified by the City’s assessor at$348,017.

In new business, the Councilvoted into first reading a handful ofbudget revisions for spending year2013: general fund municipalbudget; construction capital projectsfund budget; special revenue fundbudget; capital projects fund budget;and port operating fund budget. Themoney issues will come up for sec-ond reading and discussion by theCouncil as well as public hearing atthe next regular meeting on Feb. 25.

In personnel action, the Councilapproved a six-month contract withPaul Fuhs Professional Services ofAlaska for consulting services re-garding port design and funding.

Fuhs will receive $30,000 plusverified expenses and a small enter-tainment allowance. The contract is

renewable at the end of the termbased on agreement of both parties.

Several issues were tabled pend-ing a full Council in attendance.

Four council members attendedthe Feb. 11 meeting—Josie Stiles,Jerald Brown, Louis Green Sr. andRandy Pomeranz who led the meet-ing in the absence of Mayor DeniseMichels.

Shelved until the next meetingwas a measure to decrease the num-ber of votes required to declare awinner in Nome municipal electionsfrom the current 50 percent plus onedown to 40 percent plus one.

None of the candidates for twoexpired seats in the October electionreceived 50 percent plus one.

Therefore, incumbents Council-man Stan Andersen and CouncilmanRandy Pomeranz had to face a runoffelection in November.

Brown urged the Council to tablethe measure until there were morerepresentatives present and asked formore information concerning elec-tions in the past 10 years.

Two citizens spoke against the

NSEDC reports 2012 profits of$13.1 million before taxes

C

On the Web:www.nomenugget.netE-mail:nugget@nomenugget.com

Nugget file photoRESIGNED— NPS Superintendent Mike Brawner submitted a letter ofresignation on Monday afternoon.

By Diana HaeckerNome Public Schools Superin-

tendent Michael Brawner handed ina letter of resignation to be consid-ered by the Nome School Board intheir regular meeting on Tuesday,February 12.

School board president BetsyBrennan said on Monday that shehas not seen the letter yet and de-clined to comment on the particularssuch as effective date or reason forthe resignation.

Brawner’s contract runs out onJune 30, 2014.

Brennan said the next steps de-pend on the board’s decisionwhether to accept or refuse

Brawner’s resignation. If the boardaccepts the resignation, further ac-tion would most likely be discussedat a special meeting of the board,Brennan said.

The Board is in charge of hiring aSuperintendent.

Brawner started to work in Nomein July 2011. A three-month searchconcluded when the Board foundthree candidates and brought them toNome for public input. Brawner wasselected.

His letter of resignation was sub-mitted on Monday afternoon andadded to the School Board meetingagenda.

Maritime Symposium addresses increased Bering Strait ship traffic

continued on page 4

By Laurie McNicholasNorton Sound Economic Devel-

opment Corp. reports a profitableyear in 2012 thanks to substantial in-creases in revenues and stock mar-ket investment gains.

Company Controller Rick Wal-

SuperintendentBrawner resigns

By Diana HaeckerWhile oil, gas, mining and ship-

ping industries are jockeying for po-sition to take advantage of thedecreasing summer sea ice, BeringStrait communities and Nome are en-gaged in the quest for information onhow to deal with increased shippingtraffic the new Arctic age will bring.

The traffic is coming, as evi-denced by last summer’s first ever oiland gas exploratory drilling missionby Royal Dutch Shell, and an ever-

increasing number of vessels sailingthrough the Strait. As U.S. CoastGuard Commander James Houck putit, “I think we can all agree that with$ 4 trillion in natural reserves [in theArctic], we can’t keep the ships out.They are going to come.”

The Bering Strait Maritime Sym-posium, held last week in Nome,sought to address some of the issuesinvolved with the increased shippingtraffic through the Bering Strait.

By those who live along the coast

line, the ocean is often referred to asthe local “grocery store” or “the gar-den” as it teems with marine mam-mals and sea life on which residentssubsist.

Symposium organizer GaySheffield, Nome’s Marine AdvisoryProgram agent said in her welcomeremarks that the meeting was in-spired by a resident in Wales, whowas frustrated about a lack of infor-

Golden king crab investment increases net assets and liabilities

continued on page 4

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• Council

measure—Chuck Wheeler and TimSmith.

“I think it is wrong to changeback to the way it was. If cost is theissue, which it seems to be, regard-less, I support the 50 percent,”Wheeler said.

“The existing 50 percent is rea-sonable,” Smith said. He added thatlow turnouts meant that people

would be elected with a small per-centage of voters if the percentageof votes required were changed.

“An election is the only placepeople can express their feelings,”he said. Wheeler said the same.

The Council also tabled a resolu-tion to require a deposit for use ofthe City’s morgue facility. The de-posit and a written list of rules stemfrom discovering the morgue in dis-array. Under the plan, the Dept. of

Public Safety would inspect thepremises and return the deposit ifrules on sanitation and other re-quirements had been followed, in-cluding cleanup and no use ofalcohol or tobacco at the facility.

The Council will meet in a worksession on Feb. 21 where discussionwill include a new list of structuresup for abatement.

continued from page 1

• Bering Strait Maritime Symposium

mation and how to deal with the in-crease of human activities pressinginto the Arctic.

“We hear all these things aboutship traffic, tour ships, adventurersand Seadoo’ers coming our way. Butwhat does that mean to us? Some-body tell us how this works, becausewe don’t feel prepared for all this,”Sheffield said.

In preparation for the symposium,Sheffield asked Bering Strait com-munities what they perceive as animmediate threat resulting from in-creased ship traffic. “The numberone concern across the board washarm to essential subsistence marineresources,” Sheffield reported.

The harm was identified to comevia filth or pollution of any kind.Cynthia Barr, attending from BrevigMission, reported that residents sawsigns of ship waste on their localbeaches. “We found lettuce and car-rots washed up on our shores,” Barrsaid. “We know that they aren’t fromus because in our store there are nocarrots and lettuce.” She added thatBrevig Mission residents observedship crews washing down their deckswhile anchored at Port Clarence andat another time, they observed oilsheen in the water. “Who do we re-port that to?” she asked.

Another worry is that increasedship traffic could change the normalmigratory paths of marine mammalsand sea life.

Johnson Eningowuk of Shish-maref spoke to this, saying that hiscommunity’s fear is that more trafficwould deflect the animals from com-ing near Shishmaref.

To top off the list, residents asked,“Who do we talk to when it comes tomitigate harm to the environment,the animals and the subsistence re-sources?”

Sheffield summarized the collec-tive questions that plague the region:How do we respond to different sortsof crisis, not only oil spills, but alsodrifting vessels? Weather is always afactor and how do we deal with ascenario of a hundred or morestranded tourists off a cruise liner?Also, there are border issues with theStrait being halved into a U.S. andRussian side. What kind of trafficscheme do the Russians set up? Howdo we know what ships are coming,where they are and what is theircargo?

“Our objective is to get some an-swers to these questions. And if thereis an answer that looks like it couldbe better, let’s make it better,”Sheffield said.

Over the course of the sympo-

sium, which took place from Febru-ary 6 through 7 at the Mini Conven-tion Center in Nome, these questionswere the common thread that guideddiscussions.

Presenters included the U.S. CoastGuard, the Alaska Dept. of Environ-mental Conservation, a spill responsecoordinator with the U.S. Fish andWildlife Service, Matt Forney withthe NOAA office of navigation, thedirector of the UAF Seward MarineCenter and the UAF research ice-breaker Sikuliaq, and Eskimo WalrusCommission director Vera Metcalf.

Arctic Marine MammalCoalition

Vera Metcalf spoke on behalf of anewly created Arctic Marine Mam-mal Coalition that was formed tospecifically address increased ship-ping traffic. The coalition consists ofthe five Alaska Native organizationsthat co-manage marine mammalswith government agencies. These arethe Eskimo Walrus Commission, theEskimo Whaling Commission, theAlaska Nanuuq Commission, the IceSeal Committee and the BelugaCommission. “The Alaska Nativevoice was not fully heard at the na-tional or international level when itcomes to the health and safety of ourpeople,” Metcalf said.

U.S. Coast Guard CommanderJames Houck had asked representa-tives from the Alaska marine mam-mal organizations to band togetherand figure out what their commondenominator is. “I asked the marinemammal coalition a little over a yearago to come together and bring to meand the government, in one voicewhat their joint needs were and theyresponded fabulously,” Houck said.

The coalition is still in its infancy,but during a meeting in BowdoinCollege in Maine last year, the mem-bers came up with ten recommenda-tions that they sent to Houck to takeinto consideration as he worked onthe Port Access Routing Study, ascheme to direct heavy ship andtanker traffic.

Those recommendations includedto direct ship traffic to the East of St.Lawrence Island, to make the BeringSea, Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Seazero discharge zones, to recommendspeed limits of 10 knots during mi-gration times, to place an Arctic Ma-rine Mammal Coalition observer onevery large vessel as they transit theStrait and to develop strong relation-ships with international, federal andstate agencies that regulate largeshipping traffic.

Alaska Nanuuq Commission Ex-ecutive Director Jack Omelak saidthat the coalition aims to speak inone voice to the multitude of agen-cies that manage Alaska marinemammals. “The polar bear and theseals are intrinsically connected, butthe agencies managing them aren’t,”said Omelak. “We aim to make theArctic Marine Mammal Coalition aone-stop-shopping place and we tryto do away with the many fundingrestrictions we encounter with mul-tiple agencies involved.”

The purpose of the coalition is toadvocate on behalf of the AlaskaArctic people.

“This represents an opportunityfor Arctic subsistence users to havesome sort of input to outside agen-cies in the discussion and decisionmaking process regarding the Arc-tic,” Omelak said. He added that thecoalition aims to be funded throughfoundations rather than governmentgrants. “This would allow us to ad-dress issues outside of the co-man-agement agreements that focus onresource management strategies andnot human rights and food securityissues,” Omelak said.

Through the input in the CoastGuard’s Port Access Route Study, theArctic Marine Mammal Coalitionwould be able to have their voiceheard at the International MaritimeOrganization.

The IMO is the United Nationsspecialized agency that bears re-sponsibility for the safety and secu-rity of shipping and the prevention ofmarine pollution by ships.

Traffic schemesU.S. Coast Guard Commander

James Houck gave a preview of aproposed traffic scheme as part of aPort Access Routing Study.

The Coast Guard is in the earlystages of evaluating the need for shiprouting measures in the Bering Strait,he said. A complete routing studyand traffic schemes require coordi-nation between the U.S. and Russia.

The Coast Guard is mostly con-cerned about large ship traffic andtankers. Houck talked about an enor-mous increase in tanker vesselsthrough the Bering Strait and showednumbers he received from his Russ-ian counterpart.

The Russians estimate that by theyear 2020, there will be 50 billiontons of cargo moved through theBering Strait on the Russian sidealone. In comparison: in 2010, 10million tons of cargo sailed throughthe Strait, in 2011 80 million, and in2012, three billion tons.

He believes this is a conservativeestimate. As insurance companiesbecome comfortable with hydro-

continued from page 1

Photo by Diana HaeckerCONCERNED — Johnson Eningowuk and Bill Jones of Shishmaref voiced concerns that increased ship traf-fic might deflect sea mammals from their customary migration routes.

Photo by Diana HaeckerADVOCATING— Nanuuq Com-mission Executive Director JackOmelak explained the formationof the Arctic Marine MammalCoalition to speak with one voiceon behalf of Alaska coastal resi-dents.

continued on page 6

in May. In 2011 the corporation paid taxes

of nearly $1.5 million ($929,175 infederal taxes and $555,269 in statetaxes). The company is exempt fromfederal and state income taxes underprovisions of Section 501(c)(4) ofthe internal Revenue Code, exceptfor taxes on unrelated business in-come. NSEDC receives unrelatedbusiness income through invest-ments in Bering Sea/Aleutian Islandsfisheries that are held and managedby its wholly owned, for profit sub-sidiary, Siu Alaska Corp.

Major 2012 investmentLast November NSEDC acquired

1.2 million pounds of western Aleu-tian Islands golden king crab quotaand a crab catcher-processor, the Pa-tricia Lee, by purchasing a fishingcompany, KDS, Inc. A press releaseissued by NSEDC on Nov. 15 saidthe KDS purchase includes smallerholdings of Bering Sea opilio crabquota and St. Matthew Island blueking crab quota, along with a signif-icant share of the total allowablecatch of western Aleutian Islands redking crab, a fishery that currently isclosed.

Walicki said NSEDC borrowedabout $21 million to buy the KDScrab quota, and Siu Alaska Corp.used a line of credit to purchase thePatricia Lee for $3 million.

Siu owns 50 percent of the crabvessel Aleutian No. 1, which har-vests golden king crab in westernand eastern Aleutian Islands fish-

eries. Walicki told the board that invest-

ment activities used $28 million ofNSEDC’s cash flow in 2012. Hesaid whenever the company buyslong-term assets, there are significantcash outlays for investments thatlater produce income.

NSEDC has declined a requestfrom The Nome Nugget to state thetotal purchase price of KDS.

Walicki said NSEDC’s cash bal-ance was $8.9 million on Dec. 31,2012, compared to $10 million at theend of 2011.

Siu President John Eckles said thecompany will have a two-boat crabfleet when the Patricia Lee becomesoperational. The Siu board of direc-tors is deciding how to change thevessel’s ownership structure, headded.

Board member Joe Garnie ofTeller asked Eckles to clarify theownership structure of the AleutianNo. 1 in relation to changing theownership structure of the PatriciaLee.

Eckles explained that Siu AlaskaCorp. cannot own more than 50 per-cent of a vessel that harvestsNSEDC’s quota, so Siu must divest50 percent of its interest in the Patri-cia Lee.

Board chairman Dan Harrelsonsaid the Bering Sea Women’s Group(BSWG) owns 25 percent of theAleutian No. 1, and two skippers ofthe vessel own 25 percent.

Siu donated a 25 percent interestin the vessel to the BSWG.

Walicki said the Aleutian No. 1

skippers have paid for their share ofthe vessel and have arranged to repayNSEDC $2.4 million for crab quotaon Jan. 15, 2014.

Garnie asked Eckles whetherthere are guidelines for keeping own-ership of the Patricia Lee within theregion.

“No,” Eckles replied. “We needto divest 50 percent, and the Siuboard will make a decision soon.”

The NSEDC board met in an ex-ecutive session closed to the publicto discuss KDS articles and bylawsand to select a board of directors forthe new subsidiary.

Siu subsidiaries updateEckles said Glacier Fish Co.’s

catcher-processors Alaska Ocean andPacific Glacier are out fishing pol-lock. Fishery participants had hopedfor a pollock roe content of 2.5 per-cent, but the average is below 2 per-cent in all sectors, he added. He saidsirimi prices are down from last year.

Pollock catcher vessels owned byBSAI Partners have harvested 23percent of their A season quota, Eck-les said. The F/V Great Pacific andF/V Destination are scheduled forshipyard work, he added.

Eckles reports the Glacier Bay hassix cod fishing trips scheduled in theA and B seasons. He said fishing isthe best he has seen, but marketprices are sliding.

Siu will close the sale of the Pa-cific Star on Feb. 22, Eckles noted.The vessel has been used for charteroperations.

Eckles reports the Dutch HarborAcquisitions plant has a new cod fil-

let line. He said this season the plantwill process 500,000 pounds ofgolden king crab, mostly quota pur-chased from KDS. There is pricepressure on crab because a lot ofRussian crab and new Argentineanking crab are showing up in the mar-ket, he noted.

Funding requests grantedA request from the City of

Savoonga for $439,862 fromNSEDC’s Community Energy Fundto replace meter boxes and installLED streetlights received approvalfrom the board. The improvementsare expected to save the city about$3,000 in electricity costs annually.

The board approved a letter of in-tent to provide $300,000 to help fundconstruction of a multipurpose roomaddition to the school in Shaktoolik.Board member Eugene Asicksik ofShaktoolik said the school’s kitchenand cafeteria are to be moved to themultipurpose room. The room alsowill be used for public meetings andserve as an evacuation facility, headded.

The City of Shaktoolik received$1.5 million from the Alaska Legis-lature for the multipurpose roomproject, and has submitted an appli-cation for $850,000 to the AlaskaCommunity Development BlockGrant program, Dept. of Commerce,Community, and Economic Devel-opment. Other funds committed tothe project are $100,000 the City re-ceived from NSEDC’s CommunityBenefit Share program, and$300,000 approved by the BeringStrait School District board.

Board and staff changes Unalakleet voters chose Frank

Katchetag to represent their commu-nity on the NSEDC board in a spe-cial election held Jan. 28.

He replaces William (Middy)Johnson, who resigned from theboard in December with nearly ayear left in his three-year term. OnJan. 10 NSEDC hired Johnson asmanager of Northern Norton SoundSeafood Products (NNSSP) in Un-alakleet, a position he previouslyheld.

Unalakleet will elect a representa-tive to a new three-year board termin October of this year.

NSEDC hired Darrin Otton ofNome as tender vessel manager inNovember.

The board approved administra-tive requests to fund a full-timehuman resources specialist to assistHuman Resources Director TiffanyMartinson in the Nome office, and toexpand an office assistant position atNNSSP from seasonal to full-time.

Jerry Ivanoff honoredThe board honored Jerry Ivanoff ,

NSEDC’s director of Education, Em-ployment and Training and treasurerof the corporation, for 20 years ofservice. At a meeting in December,the board increased the company’sannual scholarship fund from$750,000 to $800,000.

A report on Norton Sound fish-eries topics discussed at the NSEDCboard meeting will appear in TheNome Nugget next week.

6 THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2013 THE NOME NUGGETREGIONAL

2/7-14

Please join us for cake and coffee to celebrate Kawerak’s 40 years of service

to the Bering Strait Region.

February 20, 2013

Kawerak Ublugiaq Building504 Seppala-2nd floor boardroom

2:00 to 3:30 p.m.For village celebration times, please contact your tribal coordinator

Kawerak Open House

2/14

• NSEDC

graphic studies and successfully tra-versing the Bering Strait eitherthrough the Northern Sea Route orthe North West Passage, Houck as-sumes they will be more willing toinsure those cargos at lower rates.“This is just an explosion of trafficwaiting to happen. My job is to makethat more predictable,” he said. Howso?

Houck showed a slide with a mapof the Bering Sea, the Bering Strait,the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. Ared line depicting his recommenda-tion for a four-mile wide, two-wayocean highway for large vessel traf-fic was drawn from Unimak Pass ina northwesterly direction west ofNunivat Island, then taking a slightnortheasterly turn to pass St.Lawrence Island and Little Diomedeto the East. The corridor is meant forlarge vessels and tankers only, notfor tug and barge traffic, whalingboats or any smaller vessel traffic.Innocent passage refers to vesselsthat transit from one foreign port toanother foreign port. Most merchantships sail under the flag of Panama,Cyprus, Greek or Russian flags.When foreign-flagged ships travelfrom or to a U.S. port, then U.S. lawsapply, but if they just transit in inno-cent passage, they are not bound by

U.S. laws as they pass through an in-ternational strait.

Pointing at the red line on hispower presentation slide, Houck ex-plained that he designed the pro-posed route with as few turns aspossible to minimize the risk ofcomplications due to turns.

The four-mile wide corridorwould also make sure that icebreak-ers could have a bit of maneuveringroom to avoid thick ice and seek outthinner ice to break through.

Areas to be avoided by large ves-sel traffic include an area around Lit-tle Diomede, Fairway Rock, afive-mile buffer around King Island,an area near Wales and around St.Lawrence Island.

“Generally there has to be a nav-igational reason to avoid certainareas,” Houck explained. However,since the area is so remote, he drewthe route so that if a vessel losespower, the Coast Guard has moretime to respond. “Those areas are soremote and so hard to get to that giv-ing us an extra 12 miles gives us atleast six hours to get on scene beforethe vessel is in a situation to runaground and cause a spill,” Houcksaid.

Houck said an added benefit ofthe proposed route is to keep the

continued from page 1

• Symposium continued from page 4

continued on page 7

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2013 7THE NOME NUGGET regional

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HAPPY 10th ANNIVERSARYKim & Blaine

With love from your family!When: Tuesday, February 19

Where: Kawerak Ublugiaq Boardroom (upstairs) at 504 Seppala Drive in Nome

Time: 7 p.m.

Purpose: Review the current comprehensive salmon plan for the region and provide recommendations to the Regional Planning Team for updates, corrections and changes.

Community meeting on salmon planning

For more information contact Carolyn Ahkvaluk at Kawerak 443-4378.

ships — that are going to come —in a narrow band and out of themajor whaling area southwest of St.Lawrence Island.

“Let’s face it: We can’t put a shipfrom Nome, which is the closestport where I could put 220-ft. buoytender, to Diomede in 12 hours,”Houck said.

Houck made clear that the four-mile-wide “highway” only appliesto major, destinational large vesseltraffic. He explained that the IMOapproves any internationally bindingship routing measures.

But how binding are those IMOrules? Houck said 90 percent of theIMO measures are voluntary and thegovernment is not going to enforcethem, but carriers are very motivatedto play by the rules. “If I’m a carrier,I will only travel routes that are safeand covered by my insurance. If I gooutside the lane for no good reasonand have an accident, I’m not cov-ered. The bottom-line is the driver,”Houck said.

Hunters in the audience askedhow they would know where theships are and how fast they’re going.Houck said that the Coast Guardtracks every ship, and that everyvessel is on VHF radio channel 16.“So if you’re out there, towing awhale across the four-mile highway,I’d have my radio on and let theships know you’re there and askthem to divert,” Houck said. Whilethe rule is that the larger vesselshave the right-of-way, special cir-cumstances will apply.

The communities of Diomede,Wales, Gambell and Savoonga alsohave access to an Automated Infor-mation System that tracks ship traf-fic.

Houck encourage communities tocall the ships on VHF and invitethem in for a basketball game or tovisit and tour the village. “It getsvery tiresome to sail in circles out inthe Arctic,” Houck said.

The Port Access Study will soonbe posted in the Federal Register. Apublic comment period of 90 dayswill follow before the final draft ispresented to the IMO.

Lessons learnedIn the summer of 2011, the large-

capacity super tanker VladimirTikhonov owned by Sovcomflotcompleted a first transit along theNorthern Sea Route. That voyagewas the first time ever that a 160,000tons deadweight ship of that size hastransported a full consignment ofcargo. The Coast Guard assumesthat larger vessels carrying largeramounts of cargo pose a greater pol-lution risk.

Melanie Bahnke, Kawerak presi-dent and CEO got up and asked whowould be willing to train the first re-sponders in the coastal communitieson all kinds of scenarios, from ship-wrecks to oil spills. Tom Deruyterwith the state DEC clarified that if

somebody spills oil, they are re-sponsible for the cleanup. “If theydon’t, the state or Feds step in toclean up,” he said.

That is not a comforting thoughtas proven by a mysterious spill thatsoiled three seals and several birdsoff St.Lawrence Island, to whichboth DEC and the Coast Guard haveyet to find the source.

Houck further commented thatthe Coast Guard is not in the busi-ness to train first responders to oilspills.

The NOAA office of coast surveyplans to conduct coastal surveys be-tween Diomede and Wales. Thissummer, they plan to survey an areaoff Port Clarence in order to get abetter understanding of the bathym-etry of the proposed highway.

Although no representative fromthe National Marine Fishery Serv-ice, a division of NOAA supposed topromote sustainable fisheries, re-covery of protected species and thehealth of coastal marine habitats,was present at the symposium, theyhave begun to work on a disaster re-sponse plan related to oil spills, nat-ural disasters and marine mammaldie-offs. The plan is supposed tocover the Bering Strait to the NorthSlope and is to detail protocols forcommunication, subsistence foodsafety, deterrence strategies, reha-bilitation, de-oiling, tissue samplingand carcass collection.

Until such a plan is in place, theregion needs to wing it and reportoiled sea life to the Nome MarineAdvisory Program agent GaySheffield or the Eskimo WalrusCommission.

In turn, what can the regionoffer? Vince Pikonganna said at onepoint that residents need to do thebest they can to help the agencies sothey would be able to help us.

Eva Menadelook spoke on behalfof Little Diomede and expressedconcern for the sea mammals andalso for the need to cooperate withthe Russians. “We share a commongoal to protect our resources,”Menadelook said.

Gay Sheffield commented thatinvited communities asked aboutwhether or not their Russian coun-terparts would be attending the sym-posium. “I found it curious that thatrequest came from the communitiesand not a single agency asked aboutthe Russians,” Sheffield said.

Other than guarded optimism thatcurrent planning efforts may protectsubsistence resources for the future,what are the communities willing tocontribute? Sheffield, reading fromthe informal survey of the needs andfears associated with increased ship-ping traffic. “Diomede sort ofsummed up what everyone else hadwritten: we can offer food, safetyand people. There is not a lot of in-frastructure out there, so if you runscared, hungry and alone, you knowthat food, safety and people are thereon the coast and that this is quite anoffer.”

• Symposium

continued from page 6

Artist in residence teachesstained glass art in Shishmaref

Story and photos by Lauren Jeffrey

What school has the opportunityto cut and solder glass into beautifulworks of art? Shishmaref Schooldid! They had the pleasure of hav-ing Jim Kaiser as their guest artist fortwo weeks. During this time, heworked with students, pre-Kinder-

garten through 12th grade, on proj-ects that showed creativity, dedica-tion, perseverance and pure talent.Jim showed students how they canturn a few sheets of glass into beau-tiful art that can be admired for yearsto come.

Not only did the students get tomake a stained-glass piece, theteachers and community membersdid too. Any teacher or communitymember who wanted to give thisform of creativity a try was wel-comed. When Jim wasn’t busyteaching the teachers how to cut andsolder glass, he was working on hisown piece.

During the ceremony for the com-munity, Jim Kaiser was kind enoughto leave a stained-glass window, ofthe northern lights, with the schoolas a gift. He said that he enjoys leav-ing a piece with the places he visitsto show how appreciative he is ofbeing asked to come and share hisjoy with others. Not only was Jim’sbeautiful window given to the schoolduring the ceremony, but all of thestudents’ artwork was set out for thevillage to see. The looks on the chil-dren’s faces when they saw theirwork on display was too beautifulfor a picture to capture.

The village of Shishmaref has en-joyed having Jim share his talentwith others to such a degree that theyasked him back for this third time.He had been in the village two timesprior, in 1994 and 1995. We haveenjoyed his experience at such a highlevel the last three times that we mayhave to ask him back again in the fu-ture.

This residency was made possiblethrough the generous funding fromthe Alaska State Council on the Arts,the Alaska State Legislature, the Na-tional Endowment for the Arts, theRasmuson Foundation, and theBering Strait School District.

ARTIST— Jim Kaiser shows astudent how to work with glass.

GIFT— Jim Kaiser, right, pres-ents the Northern Lights windowhe made for Shishmaref School.