Maggie Nelson
Senior ReporterHailing from Southwest Washington, Maggie moved to Unalaska in 2019. She's dabbled in independent print journalism in Oregon and completed her Master of Arts in English Studies at Western Washington University — where she also taught Rhetoric and Composition courses. In 2017 Maggie spent time working on a commercial tender boat out of Wrangell and is excited to finally return to Alaska to produce content for the Unalaska community.
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Dustin Ruckman, 23, will face an Unalaska jury in late August for counts of manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and reckless driving.
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A years-long Alaska seafood battle over a complicated shipping exemption has been settled. Two Bering Sea seafood shipping companies, Alaska Reefer Management LLC and Kloosterboer International Forwarding LLC, settled a lawsuit in January challenging penalties that had been levied by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Alaska Reefer Management is a subsidiary of American Seafoods, one of Alaska’s biggest fishing companies. Together, the companies will pay the federal government $9.5 million after violating federal shipping laws.
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The Unalaska City School District will send fifth graders down to the elementary building starting next school year. Administrators recently announced they will put the fifth grade class in the Eagle’s View Elementary Achigaalux̂ building for the first time since it was constructed.
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Regional council says it won’t tighten fishing regulations in Bristol Bay red king crab savings areaThe North Pacific Fishery Management Council will not move forward with a request to close the Bristol Bay red king crab savings area to all commercial fishing. At its February meeting, the regulatory council looked at the effectiveness of closing the 4,000-square-nautical-mile section of the eastern Bering Sea to commercial trawl, pot and longline fishing, but decided not to tighten regulations in the area.
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A new judge overseeing a criminal case involving a fatal 2019 car crash in Unalaska has granted the defense extra time to solidify a new trial date. In a status hearing on Feb. 8, Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews allowed Julia Moudy, the lead counsel for the defense, another month to go through discovery materials, gather experts and find a trial date that will fit her schedule. That comes after several delays and complications in the case – the latest being a change in lead counsel for the defense, which led to the appointment of a new trial judge.
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A fire broke out at Sand Point’s Peter Pan Seafood Co. facility Wednesday morning. Edith Mejia, the office manager and a dispatcher for the small Aleutian town’s police department, said the fire likely started between 7 and 8 a.m.
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The state-water cod fishery for pot gear boats of 58 feet or less in the Dutch Harbor Subdistrict opened Thursday, Feb. 1 at noon. Those harvesters have a limit of 60 pots per vessel and a guideline harvest level of a little more than 44 million pounds. That’s the largest harvest level the fishery has ever seen. Last year’s was the second biggest at just over 38 million pounds.
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Diana Rentaria has been attending hearings, arraignments and trial calls for nearly five years, in hopes of eventually finding justice in a criminal case involving the death of her 18-year-old daughter Kiara R. Haist and another Unalaska teen. In May 2019, Dustin Ruckman, a high schooler at the time, drove his truck off of Unalaska’s Ulakta Head Cliff. Haist and 16-year-old Karly McDonald were ejected from the vehicle and killed as the pickup descended nearly 1,000 feet down the mountain. From that time on, Rentaria says she has been in limbo, trying to adapt to her new life without the child she used to call “Kiwi.” “You just try to live in the world as that other person you're supposed to be,” Rentaria said. “But at the end of the day, you go home and you wonder, ‘Are you okay? Are you hungry? Are you cold? Can I see you in the moon if I stare at the moon long enough?’” Jan. 17 would have been Haist’s 23rd birthday.
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Unalaska could see winds of up to 100 miles per hour on Saturday, according to the National Weather Service.The federal agency has issued a high wind warning for the Eastern Aleutians including Unalaska and Nikolski from 10 a.m to 9 p.m. Saturday with south to southwest winds of 50 to 70 mph. The strongest winds of around 90 mph are expected from noon to 4 p.m., with gusts up to 100 mph possible, as winds move through the mountains.
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The majority of Alaska’s Bristol Bay commercial red king crab have been caught for the season. This year’s quota was rather low, coming in at about 2.1 million pounds for the entire fleet. To compare, that’s less than half the total allowable catch, or TAC, for the 2018/2019 season. Ethan Nichols is the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s area management biologist for groundfish and shellfish in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands region. He said even just a couple million pounds was a welcome amount for harvesters during historic lows in the state’s commercial crab industry.