"We need to bring the skateboarders back to the drawing board and really take a look at what we need to do to bring the user groups together with others," said assembly member Jim Powell. "I actually think it's a great opportunity for this community to make the downtown more of a residential area."

The assembly voted to reconsider the ordinance after a committee made up of skateboarders, downtown business people and cruise ship representatives could meet and provide suggestions.

The proposed revision to city code would have prohibited skateboarding in Marine Park during the summer. Skateboarding already is banned on most downtown streets during tourist season and in Marine Park when cruise ships are here.

Juneau has one skateboard park in the Mendenhall Valley.

Representatives of the cruise ship industry and assembly members who support the revision say downtown skaters endanger pedestrians and will damage benches and curbs in the new Marine Park and Steamship Wharf.

The assembly heard more than an hour of testimony at its last meeting, the majority from people against the ordinance change. On more than one occasion, Mayor Sally Smith had to remind the audience not to applaud in support.

Many compared skateboarding to other sports such as basketball and asked why there were not more places to skateboard. Others said the skate park in the Mendenhall Valley was too crowded and didn't provide the challenge of skating on the street.

Robert Garrison, 82, told the assembly the skateboarders threaten his safety. He has to get monthly injections to strengthen his bones, he said.

"Young fellows zipping by me, if they broke my ankle I would probably be all through," he said. "A person my age, to break my leg they would probably finish me. I don't think they spend enough time being careful."

Kevin Gullufsen, 13, said outlawing skateboarding in downtown probably wouldn't stop people from skateboarding there.

"People are just so passionate about it," he said.

Juneau attorney Mary Alice McKeen spoke against the ordinance change.

The Juneau Empire

Four fuzzy ducklings hatched at the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward will test the accuracy of orbiting satellites and demonstrate how seabirds fare with miniature computers placed inside their bodies.

The three female and one male common eiders, nicknamed Solstice, June, Yukon and Summer, were born in the five-day period beginning June 22 at the research facility, said eider research technician Bill O'Connell.

The birds came from eggs gathered on Kigigak Island, on the edge of the Bering Sea near Newtok. More eggs will be taken to the center later this summer.

"They're now in blue fish totes, and we have heat lamps on them," O'Connell said. "They have unlimited access to food and water, and they're monitored all the time."

The birds will begin shifting to outdoor pools as soon as their glands produce enough natural oil to make them waterproof. When they reach an adult weight of about 4.5 pounds in November, they will be surgically implanted with satellite transmitters. Then, in a yearlong study designed by U.S. Geological Survey eider biologist Margaret Petersen, scientists will use the birds to check the accuracy of location readings.

Birds that travel vast distances across the sea are often tracked via satellite from transmitters nestled in body cavities. But the information produced by this process isn't always accurate, sometimes giving coordinates hundreds or thousands of yards from actual locations. And no one really knows how the birds do week by week with devices inside them.

The eiders will live out the year on the outdoor research deck overlooking Resurrection Bay, monitored daily by eider specialists.

"We'll know within the meter actually where the birds are. We'll have the coordinates of the pool where they live," O'Connell said. "No one has ever done that before."

After a year, the eiders will join the center's permanent research flock, which includes spectacled and Steller's eiders for long-term biological studies.

Fairbanks Daily News-Miner