Crew members of the Little Joe commercial fishing vessel unload crab from the hold on Monday. The Pilot/Jane Stebbins

Among the first crabbing vessels to arrive at the Port of Brookings Harbor Monday afternoon was the Little Joe, with about 10,000 pounds of crab on board.

“Any day crabbing is a good day,” someone commented as the boat sidled up to the dock.

Commercial crabbing season officially began at midnight Monday morning, and dozens of boats took to the placid seas to pull pots that had been placed over the weekend. Seasoned fishermen fought off the pinching crustaceans to unload them into metal bins that were hauled off the boat and into containers to be trucked to Eureka for processing.

Officials in Washington are examining a second boat dock that washed up from the ocean Dec. 21 to see if it is from the March 11, 2011 tsunami that struck Japan, while others in Oregon and California are awaiting winter currents to bring them debris.

The U.S. Coast Guard spotted the dock on the rugged Olympic Peninsula – five miles from the nearest road.

“There were multiple inaccessible areas, and the dock seemed to find one,” said Curry County Emergency Services Coordinator Don Kendall said when he was notified of the dock’s appearance. “A lot of people are involved in that: the state, counties, park service, NOAA, the state fire marshall – everyone.

New CASA volunteers (from left) are Mike Leaver, Crystal Binger, (with Judge Cynthia Beaman), Rachelle Schmeer and Roxann Haynes. The Pilot/Submitted photo

Five Curry County citizens have volunteered to be “the army” behind CASA, the Court Appointed Special Advocates who represent children involved in the court system.

“CASA is the most important tool we have to fight on  behalf of each child,” said Mona Chandler, director of CASA of Curry County. “They want to be a positive and stable adult in a child’s life. They see how their actions will benefit not only their self-perception of their role in the community, but how their actions will directly improve the lives of the children they serve.”

CASA volunteers are appointed by judges to watch over and advocate for abused and neglected children navigating the overburdened legal and social service system or perhaps languishing in inappropriate group or foster homes.

More than a year after federal regulators seized control, Chetco Federal Credit Union will be liquidated Monday, with the assets and operations acquired by two neighboring credit unions.

Rogue Federal Credit Union, headquartered in Medford, will “purchase and assume” the five CFCU branches and memberships in Oregon, while Coast Central Credit Union from Eureka, Calif., will purchase and assume the Crescent City branch and memberships.

Sudden Oak Death is on the move again, requiring state forestry officials to readjust the quarantine boundary in Curry County.

According to Jim Young, Coos District Forester with the state forestry department, the new site is east of the existing quarantine boundary – and on U.S. Forest Service land.

FEMA couldn’t help Curry County after the Nov. 20 storm wreaked havoc on everything from roads to decks – and the county didn’t have the funds.

Curry County Emergency Services Coordinator Don Kendall was running out of ideas until he heard of the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee (CRWRC).

The Brookings-Harbor School Board gave Brookings-Harbor High School Athletic Director Buell Gonzales its full support Wednesday to form a committee to look into replacing the grass field inside the track at BHHS with artificial turf. The estimated cost is $1.2 million.

The committee would apply for grants and brainstorm fundraising opportunities; the project would have zero cost to the district, Gonzales said during the meeting. 

WASHINGTON – With the so-called fiscal cliff looming, and no deal yet struck between Republican and Democratic leaders in Washington, Oregon officials are faced with the possibility that a slew of federal spending cuts will go into effect on Jan. 1.

“If sequestration is the road that they go down, then I think the effects are fairly limited in Oregon,” said George Naughton, Gov. John Kitzhaber’s main budget advisor.

Curry County Commissioner David Itzen said he’d like to tell everyone all is well with county government, he said in his annual State of the County Address on Dec. 19.

“That would be a complete distortion of reality and disingenuous at best,” he said. “Curry County is at a crossroads. It is operating with a skeleton workforce. Many county services are not funded, and those that are, are done so without a full complement of employees.”

Six-year-old Conner Krieger and his brother Landyn Miller, 8, were presented with life saving awards from the Oregon State Sheriff’s Association (OSSA) at a county commissioner’s meeting Wednesday morning.

The presentations were part of the organization’s annual conference in Bend the boys could not attend. Curry County Sheriff’s Office garnered an additional six awards during the week-long conference.