Four gastrointestinal illness outbreaks aboard a small cruise ship in Southeast Alaska in less than two months have resulted in its owner cancelling a trip scheduled to depart Juneau on Saturday.
The National Geographic Sea Bird has reported four outbreaks since May 26 to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the only vessel reporting more than one outbreak to the agency during 2026. The most recent was during a voyage July 15-20 between Juneau and Ketchikan, following other outbreaks on trips July 10-15, June 25-30 and May 26-21.
Eight of 57 passengers and five of 26 crew were reported ill during the July 15-20 voyage, according to a CDC report published Thursday. The cause is listed as unknown, similar to the July 10-15 outbreak resulting in 18 illnesses, while the other two with a total of 32 illnesses are listed as norovirus.
The Sea Bird was scheduled to depart Ketchikan on Monday, July 20, for a voyage arriving in Juneau on Saturday, according to the tracking site CruiseMapper. However, the site shows the ship still docked in Ketchikan as of Thursday afternoon. The ship was also supposed to dock in Haines on July 27.
Lindblad Expeditions, in a notice to a passenger booked on a July 25-30 trip that was obtained by the Juneau Independent, states “we have made the difficult decision to cancel the voyage.”
“Following reports of gastrointestinal illness on recent sailings, and after consulting experts and partners, we determined that cancelling this voyage is the most responsible course of action,” the notice states. “This was not a decision we made lightly. We know how much anticipation goes into a journey like this, and we recognize how disappointing this news will be.”
Lindblad Expeditions has not responded to requests from the Juneau Independent for comment about the outbreaks. There was no mention of the outbreak or the cancellation as of early Thursday afternoon at the company’s website.
This company announced last December this is the final season the National Geographic Sea Bird, originally built in 1982 and refurbished in 2014, will be in service.
Brant fly over Izembek Lagoon at Izembek National Wildlife Refuge.on Sept. 28, 2016. The refuge is used as a migratory stop for nearly the entire global population of Pacific black brant. a type of goose. Two new lawsuits are challenging a federal permit for a road that would cross Izembek habitat used by the brant and other migratory birds. (Photo by Kristine Sowl/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)
Two weeks before construction could begin on a controversial road that would cut through Izembek National Wildlife Refuge wetlands, three Western Alaska tribal governments and several environmental groups have filed new lawsuits seeking to block the project.
Both complaints, filed in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, are seeking to overturn a key permit issued earlier this month by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for a 19-mile road that would pass through what had previously been protected as designated wilderness within the refuge.
Plaintiffs in one of the lawsuits, filed Thursday, are the Native Village of Hooper Bay, the Native Village of Paimiut and the Chevak Native Village, tribal governments with Yup’ik members and the Center for Biological Diversity, whose attorneys are handling the lawsuit. Plaintiffs in the other lawsuit, filed Wednesday, are Friends of Alaska National Wildlife Refuges, the Alaska Wilderness League, the National Wildlife Refuge Association, the Sierra Club and Wilderness Watch. The environmental groups are represented by Trustees for Alaska, an Anchorage-based environmental law firm.
Defendants in both cases are the Corps, and the tribal lawsuit also names the Alaska director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the Izembek refuge, and U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum as defendants.
Plaintiffs say the Corps’ wetlands-fill permit, issued to the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, is illegal because the federal agency failed to fully consider the impacts to the wetlands and wildlife.
the environmentalists’ lawsuit described the importance of the area that they said would be damaged by the road: “Izembek is one of the world’s most important migratory bird staging and wintering habitats, supporting millions of migratory waterfowl and shorebirds in its coastal lagoons and freshwater wetlands complex.”
The tribes’ lawsuit said harm from the road to the migrating geese that use the refuge, “including poor body condition, diminished reproductive success, and reduced survival rates” would have serious consequences for tribal residents who depend on those birds for their subsistence hunts and culture.
The Interior Department declined to comment on the lawsuits challenging the Corps permit, and the Corps did not respond to an emailed query.
A land trade necessary for the road construction, which swapped land owned by the King Cove Corp., an Alaska Native Village Corporation, for some designated wilderness land within the refuge, got the Trump administration’s final approval in October.
Green eelgrass appears at low tide on April 17, 2021, in the vast wetlands of Izembek Lagoon, at the edge of Izembek Refuge. (Photo by Kristine Sowl/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)
That land trade is also being challenged in federal court by the same plaintiffs, along with Defenders of Wildlife. Those lawsuits have been consolidated, and they remain pending. U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason has said she will issue a decision in that matter soon.
The Department of Transportation plans to start building the first section of the road, to stretch almost 3 miles, as early as Aug. 8, according to a notice filed in U.S. District Court by the Alaska Department of Law.
The road plan has been promoted for decades by residents of the isolated Aleut village of King Cove, which has about 750 residents, according to the city. It would connect the village to a military-quality airstrip at Cold Bay, a community of only about 50 people but previously the site of military operations that began in World War II. A legacy of those operations is the still-used Cold Bay airport, which features a runway over 10,000 feet in length.
To King Cove residents and their supporters, the road is a crucial link needed for emergency evacuations in a part of Alaska frequently beset by bad weather. King Cove’s tiny airport is frequently unusable, but the Cold Bay airport, which is only a few miles away, can handle big aircraft flying in bad weather, making access to it critical.
“The road is not just about transportation, it is a matter of human rights, Indigenous self-determination, and environmental justice,” said a statement issued by the Aleut Corp., the regional Native-owned corporation that includes King Cove. The statement followed completion of the land trade in October.
When the Corps permit was issued on July 10 to the Department of Transportation, Alaska political leaders celebrated, including with praise for President Donald Trump.
“This is a historic day for the people of King Cove and the people of Alaska,” Gov. Mike Dunleavy said in a statement issued that day. “I want to thank President Trump and his administration for putting the people of Alaska first and allowing this road to become a reality.”
U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, used the occasion to bash former President Joe Biden.
“For Alaskans, the decades-long King Cove Road impasse has been a symbol of an uncaring, out-of-touch, faraway federal government that prioritizes the lives of birds over people,” Sullivan said in a statement released by the three-member Alaska congressional delegation. “The great residents of King Cove time and again have kept hope alive, despite setbacks, most recently when the Biden administration disregarded the voices of the community and withdrew the previously approved land exchange.”
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Carol Beecher, the new director of the Alaska Division of Elections, answers questions from reporters on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
The state of Alaska has removed an estimated 3,000 to 3,500 Alaskans from the state’s active voter list, claiming they may be noncitizens.
The removals leave those residents able to vote only if they provide extra identity information, and removal puts them on track to be purged from the state’s voter roll altogether.
Only U.S. citizens may vote in Alaska, according to state and federal law, but many of the removals appear to have affected citizens who were erroneously flagged by the Alaska Division of Motor Vehicles.
Carol Beecher, director of the Alaska Division of Elections, told state lawmakers on Wednesday that the removals were the result of “old data” given to the division from the DMV, and she isn’t sure why so many Alaskans were flagged as possible noncitizens.
Under Alaska’s “motor voter” program, people are asked if they want to register to vote when they apply for a driver’s license. The registration process requires the applicant to state whether or not they are a citizen.
Elections officials check the state’s voter roll against DMV records several times per year, searching for people who may be incorrectly registered to vote here. That usually results in “more like 200 names” being flagged for extra attention, Beecher said.
The latest check found “a lot more names than we were expecting,” Beecher said.
“We believe that when we did the match, that a lot of old data was picked up somehow. So we’re still ferreting through that,” she said.
Beecher said that although the number of names flagged by the DMV was “very concerning,” the state has an obligation to act on the agency’s report.
“It is not disenfranchising the individual from being able to vote, but it’s a measure the division has to take to make sure that we only have citizens voting,” she said.
Under its normal procedure, the division sends letters to people who were flagged by the DMV, asking those people if they are citizens.
Thousands of those letters were mailed to affected state residents starting last month, according to Beecher’s testimony and copies provided to the Beacon by affected citizens.
Beecher told lawmakers that anyone deemed a noncitizen by the state simply needs to contact the Division of Elections by phone, email or mail and state that they are a citizen.
“It is not an onerous request from the division to simply contact us and confirm, and that is what we have asked them to do. We don’t require paperwork. We’re not requiring documentation. Nothing like that,” she said.
After Beecher’s statements, the Beacon asked the head of the Alaska Division of Motor Vehicles, Kathy Wallace, and the Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Administration, Paula Vrana, for an interview. The Department of Administration is the DMV’s parent agency.
In response, the division sent a memo saying that in March, “the DOE provided DMV with a list of approximately 15,200 DMV license and identification applicants and requested that DMV provide citizenship information for these records. This was a non-routine request.”
What it gave to the Division of Elections was “only those records where DMV’s latest confirmed status for an individual was other than ‘Citizen.’”
Based on interviews with affected people, the records flagged by the DMV appear to include Alaskans who obtained driver’s licenses as noncitizens, then became citizens and registered to vote, but have not received a new driver’s license since becoming a citizen.
Alaskans respond to being put on the inactive list
Chris Waigl of Fairbanks got her Alaska driver’s license in 2019 and became an American citizen in 2025. She became alarmed after checking her registration status last weekend, only to learn that she was listed as “inactive – non citizen.”
“They were able to correct it there and then after I sent in copies of my naturalization certificate with a date before my voter registration date,” she said by email.
But Waigl went further, contacting four other people who became naturalized citizens at the same time she did. Of those, only one said they were still listed as an active voter.
One of the others, reached by phone, said he was listed as inactive despite registering as a voter at the local DMV office and presenting his citizenship paperwork at that time.
Another naturalized citizen, living in Juneau and unaffiliated with Waigl, said they also were unregistered despite indicating on their Permanent Fund dividend application that they are a citizen.
Several people affected by the removal said they have attempted to contact the Division of Elections but have been unable to reach staff by phone, and that voicemail boxes have been full.
“It’s just ridiculous,” Waigl said.
She said the state’s policy of simply sending a letter is inadequate, particularly because there may be legal consequences if the state or federal government believes someone has voted as a noncitizen.
“Citizenship rights, immigration is something I’m interested in for obvious reasons,” she said.
This isn’t the first time voter registration issues have been attributed to the DMV.
In 2022, mistakes by the division led to dozens of noncitizens being registered to vote, even if they specifically stated they were nonresidents and ineligible. Some went on to cast ballots in state and local elections.
The scale of the new removals is notable. Last year, a copy of the state’s inactive voter list showed 541 registrations listed as belonging to possible noncitizens.
If 3,500 people were added to the inactive list by the Division of Elections, that would represent more than a 700% increase.
The removals caused the state’s active voter roll to shrink between June and July, the first time since at least 2020 that has occurred in an election year, state statistics show.
The removals come seven months after Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, who oversees the Division of Elections, directed the state to answer a request from the U.S. Department of Justice and turn over extended copies of the state’s voter rolls.
“I’m just truly deeply concerned about this process creating even more distrust in our voter rolls, as if there isn’t enough already because of allegations,” Rep. Ky Holland, I-Anchorage, told Beecher on Wednesday.
Civil rights groups sued the state in April over the voter list issue. In June, the state filed a motion to dismiss; that motion is awaiting adjudication.
State legislators asked Beecher on Wednesday if the latest removals were at the behest of the federal government.
No, said Beecher.
“It has nothing to do with that,” she said. “The information that we have received is specifically from DMV. Why the voter list or why the list was so large this time, we’re not completely sure… we are looking into figuring that out.”
But, she added, if the federal government were to request a removal, the state would follow the exact same procedure as it used recently.
“If we were to get information from them, we would take the same steps of moving them into inactive while we investigated,” she said.
Sandi Thares owns the O-Haire Inn in downtown Great Falls and serves as president of the Great Falls Police Community Foundation for nearly 10 years. She said the work brought her a strong sense of purpose.
Mizzou track and field was represented by two athletes at the USATF Outdoor Track & Field Championships, while Chandler Gibbens, a graduate of Hickman High School, also competed.
