KCAW

Painter Stephen Lawrie joins KCAW to talk about how fishing has always been a throughline within the communities of Southeast Alaska as well as his artwork. Lawrie’s new exhibition, part two of “This Thing We Call The Ocean…Names Discovered, Stories Told,” will open June 13 at the Pioneer Bar and showcase fishermen of the past. Listen to the conversation here:

The Sitka Public Library will be screening The Librarians, a documentary about librarians upholding the First Amendment in the face of censorship, on June 11 at Harrigan Centennial Hall. Adult Services Librarian Margot O’Connell joins KCAW to highlight the history between book bans, librarians, and democracy. Listen to the conversation here:

Some Southeast Alaskans may have only stopped in Yakutat on the “milk run” flight to Anchorage. But just beyond the tarmac lies a birders paradise. From black legged kittiwake’s nesting on the jagged edges of seaside cliffs, to a posse of surf scoters, riding the ocean waves in a v-formation as they forage for mussels off of the rocks below. 

But there is one bird in particular that has motivated a pack of over a dozen visitors across the country to wander through beach dunes early on a Saturday morning, armed with binoculars and zoom camera lenses: the Aleutian tern. 

Nate Catterson is the volunteer guide leading the trip. He began birding  over a decade ago to learn more about his surrounding environment. Since then, he has worked to help track the migration of Aleutian terns, traveling as far as Indonesia. Yakutat is key to that research, since the village is home to the southernmost breeding colony of Aleutian terns. And they are not the only terns that make a pit stop here, with Catterson pointing out an Arctic tern landing a few feet ahead of the group.

The tern birding trip is one of many activities organized by the Yakutat Tern Festival, a four-day gathering organized by the Yakutat Nature Society that brings locals and visitors from all over the country to observe and learn more about terns and other wildlife in the area.

Catterson is an attentive guide, answering questions as they crop up while sharing enough facts about terns to fill up a trivia quiz. His knowledge proves insightful to everyone from beginner birders to cultivated conservationists like Paul Bannick, who is also the keynote speaker for the conference. While Bannick has photographed birds across Alaska, it is his first time in Yakutat. He looks up at the terns and smiles, clearly enchanted by them. 

“To be encountered with the story of a bird that’s traveling 1000s of miles to survive, but also their elegance and resilience and beauty. And they’re small birds, yet incredibly protective of their young and their nests, fearless. All of these things I think offer inspiration,” says Bannick.

Seth Rosenberder is a lifelong birder from Cordova. He initially got into birding under the influence of his maternal grandmother.

“She was enthusiastic about birds. I still have the field guide that she gave me when I was seven years old,” says Rosenberder.

He is attending the festival for the first time with his partner. Rosenberder says he is grateful for the opportunity to connect with birders from all over. 

“We get to come and network with each other, and meet different people and figure out different places that we want to go [birding],” says Rosenberder. “I think the community, the togetherness aspect of it, is important.”

Bannick says that events like the festival play an important role in engaging people with conservation work. That’s especially important for the Aleutian tern population in the United States, which researchers say has had a steep decline over the past few decades. 

“It’s been said that we protect what we love, and we only love what we know,” says Bannick. “If you care about conservation, you should care about creating opportunities for people to fall in love with natural systems and wildlife, and this festival gives people a doorway to walk through and find that love, which can change their life and change the lives of other people that they come into contact with.”

Melissa Allen, of Juneau, is a festival volunteer who experienced that first-hand. She was recruited by the festival’s coordinator after sharing that she was DJing at a different event celebrating Arctic terns. Today’s walk on the beach was Allen’s first time ever seeing an Aleutian tern, adding fuel to her newfound passion. 

“Last year was the first time that I learned about Arctic terns, and I feel like that’s cracked open something in me,” says Allen. “There’s a great blue heron that lives by where I live, and that’s been really special, and the mergansers and the harlequin ducks that have been coming around, I’ve started noticing birds ever since I first learned about terns… I’m not a birder, but I think I’ll get there.”

If Allen does begin to consider herself a birder, she’s with the right crowd. The festival organizers hope to continue drawing attendees, old and new alike, to expand their flock of enthusiastic birders and everyday conservationists. 

It’s early May, and five gray whales weave between the kelp as they feed on herring eggs in the water around our 20-foot inflatable boat. Researchers are taking photos to identify individual whales and measure how much weight they’ve gained since they arrived in the Sitka area about a month ago on their yearly migration north. 

“These whales are foraging, and it’s probably 10, 15 feet of water right there, and they’ve got their heads down in the sediment, probably rolled over on their right sides, and they’re kind of picking off herring eggs,” says Liah McPherson, a PhD student who is leading the ecological data collection for a research project through the Alaska Whale Foundation. 

McPherson and her research team are looking at the relationship between gray whales and herring around Sitka. The baleen whales have had a massive population decline in the past decade, but their presence in Sitka Sound has skyrocketed in recent years, coinciding with the Pacific herring spawn. Now, the team and community collaborators are asking why that is and what the downstream effects might be. 

“My favorite whale, we call him White Spot,” McPherson says, getting ready to launch a drone into the sky above our boat. “This particular animal I’ve seen in 2023, 2024, 2025, and this year, in 2026, we’ve seen him a couple times as well. So it’s like seeing an old friend. It’s like, ‘Oh, there you are. I’m glad you’re still coming here.’” 

The Eastern North Pacific gray whale population has declined by more than 50% — from roughly 27,000 whales in 2015/2016 to 14,000 whales in 2022/2023 — since a marine heatwave known as “the blob” hit the Pacific ocean about a decade ago. Since then, there have been increases in gray whale strandings along the west coast and widespread reports of whales in poor condition. 

But it appears that some whales are adapting to the ecological change by migrating to forage areas where they didn’t used to go. Around 2019, McPherson says, gray whales started showing up in Sitka in massive numbers, just as the herring spawn got underway. 

“They have always kind of had a presence here, but in very small numbers, like five to 10 gray whales,” she says. “And then local community members, organizations, scientists, they really started to see these numbers spike and go up about tenfold. Now we see about 150 to 200, maybe even more, gray whales coming in between March and May to take advantage of herring eggs.”

Gray whales have the longest migration of any mammal, traveling roughly 10,000-12,000 miles every year from their feeding grounds in the Bering and Chukchi seas to their breeding grounds off the coast of Mexico. 

Lauren Eckert, a conservation scientist based at the University of British Columbia in the Centre for Indigenous Fisheries and a board member of the Alaska Whale Foundation, says scientists think gray whales are unable to get the food they need to make their long migration, so they’re pivoting to find new foraging grounds and new food sources. 

“The big picture, what we’re seeing is adaptation in a very curious and intelligent species that’s struggling with the impacts of climate change,” Eckert says.

And other new behaviors are being documented. Researchers are starting to see gray whales, who traditionally forage on sea-bottom organisms in the Arctic, , lunge feed on adult fish off the coast of California, and feed on krill swimming through the water.

So, informed by these observations, community experts, Tribal and regional managers, and these researchers are asking: How important are herring, as prey, and Sitka Sound, as a foraging ground, for gray whales? And what impact, if any, are gray whales having on the ecologically, commercially, and culturally important Sitka Sound herring stock?

“These are sort of like canaries in the coal mine, if you will, signaling changing ocean conditions,” Eckert says.

Back on the water, McPherson and her team of interns are continuing their survey using drones, cameras, and suction cup tags to build out their catalog of gray whales coming to Sitka and later extrapolate how much blubber they’re putting on by eating herring eggs.  

Intern Adelle Wilkin climbs a ladder to get a closer look with her camera as a whale comes to the surface, and calls out the names of various seabirds she spots around us. Wilkin is trying to get photos of a specific part of the whale’s side near its dorsal ridge (a series of small bumps between its dorsal hump and tail flukes), which she says makes it look dinosaur-like.

“I started [my work] in acoustics, and I could have gone either way: birds are whales,” she says. “But there is just something about whales. They’re so special and they’re so intelligent, and birds are too, but there’s something about studying such a long-lived group of animals that have so much economic value, and [are] so culturally important in so many places that it had to be whales for me.” 

Wilkin says it’s special to be part of a project that is so important for both humans and whales. 

“Being a part of researching a species as it’s struggling, you are really, really rooting for it, and that’s probably, at the end of the day, why I love gray whales so much,” she says. “They’re resilient and they’re adaptive, and their food is declining in the Arctic, so they feed on fish, and they feed on benthic invertebrates in unique places, and they feed on herring eggs, and they’re just a species that will find a way to survive. They’ll like find a way to make it, which I love about them.”

This is the team’s second full-fledged season out on the water, and even though they’ve only recently started collecting data, Eckert says they’ve had some telling initial findings. 

“We’ve learned very preliminarily that whales, even though they’re in Sitka Sound for a short amount of time, are gaining body mass quite quickly as they’re eating,” she says. “An early estimate puts it at about a bread box worth of body volume a day while they’re in Sitka Sound, each whale feeding. And so that is starting to be the first steps of getting us to understanding how much whales are consuming in order to gain that sort of weight while they’re here, and potentially how important this halfway-to-their-foraging-ground stopover point is for whales that are skinny and struggling.”

The other piece of the puzzle, regarding the impact on Sitka’s herring population, is still far from being figured out. 

Andy Szabo is the executive director of the Whale Foundation. He says the team is slowly building out an energetics model — based on historical whaling data and knowledge about how much energy it takes for a whale to put on blubber — to extrapolate how many herring eggs gray whales are removing from Sitka Sound each spring. In turn, he hopes that data can help inform management decisions moving forward. 

Szabo says they’re studying a really complex system and complex species interaction, and their research and data is one piece of a much larger environmental puzzle.

“There was never any question that the data we were collecting from the moment we started collecting it was important and impactful, and that there was going to be stakes and rights holders who could really use and value the data that are coming from this,” he says. “And that’s not always the case.”

Szabo says they hope to run the study for as long as they have funding and as long as there’s value in the data they’re collecting. 

Interested in making a mark on Lincoln Street? Sitka Walkability Advocacy Collab is calling for designs to paint inside downtown crosswalks. Vice Deputy Mayor JJ Carlson joins KCAW to discuss the benefits of walking and what the Collab is doing to improve pedestrian safety. Pick up design entry forms at City Hall and the Sitka Public Library or email your design to [email protected] by June 24. Listen to the conversation here:

The Alaska Legislature is in a special session, and most of the work is being done by the finance committees. The regular session ended on May 20. Independent Representative Rebecca Himschoot of Sitka says she’s glad Southeast’s Senator Bert Stedman, who co-chairs the Senate Finance Committee, is part of the special session negotiations. They’re focusing on a gas pipeline, and she says the senator, quote: “has our back.”

Himschoot represents Sitka, Petersburg, and small towns from Yakutat down to Prince of Wales Island – 22 in all. In an interview with CoastAlaska’s Angela Denning, she says there was a lot of teamwork in the regular session. But she’s frustrated that two bills that were supported statewide were vetoed by the governor – the pension bill for state employees and the election reform bill. Now, she hopes the omnibus crime bill does get the governor’s approval.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Himschoot: I have no complaints about how the session went. I think there was a lot of teamwork going on and good alignment between the two bodies for the most part on most issues. What I’m most proud of is the three major bills that passed, and what I’m most frustrated about is that two of those were vetoed and we were unable to override those vetoes. So, the one that I have been deeply engaged with is the Public Pensions Bill, House Bill 78. Since 2006, we have not offered any kind of competitive retirement system for state employees, so those are emergency personnel, teachers, etc. And we finally got a bill across both bodies that would restore a pension that is not, as I’ll just say, not as rich as the pension that a Tier One person would remember getting, or even a Tier Two, which is the pension I’m in. But it would make Alaska somewhat more competitive with other states, and we have a really tight labor market in a lot of those state positions, and I’m, of course, most familiar with teaching. So, anything we can do to make our teaching positions more competitive with other states, we need to do. And we did pass a pension bill, of course, it was vetoed, and we did not have the votes to override that. And the other bill that got vetoed that I think was a really positive bill for Alaska was Senate Bill 64. It took about 10 years to come to agreement across party lines on an elections bill that would tighten up our voter rolls a little bit. We have the automatic enrollment with the dividend, and so we’re over-enrolled, and so looking for ways to clarify who’s actually a voter in Alaska. It also had a ballot tracking system. I was especially excited about having a rural liaison who could make sure that rural voting places were open and had the right ballots. We’ve had issues with that in the recent past, and so when that got vetoed, it was painful to see all that work, I guess, go down the drain. And the third one is the Omnibus Crime Bill, which is really made up of, I think, a dozen different small crime legislation. And so, the big deal in that one is changing the age of consent from 16 to 18, except for close in age exemptions. And that’s been, I think, a tricky thing to do in Alaska, and it’s, you know, it’s a different number in every state, but 16 is on the low end, and so to move that up, I think, will help with some of our high rates of sexual assault and domestic violence. It also makes it so that AI-generated child sexual abuse material is criminalized, and then there are a whole bunch of other little things that are in there, but I think the huge victory in that bill is changing the age of consent. So, I hope it will get the governor’s support.

CoastAlaska: How does that feel to have dozens of representatives across the state affiliated with different parties, and they come to this more or less consensus on months of this work? And then this governor, he’s vetoed a lot more than other past governors.

Himschoot: I think, in short, the word is frustrating. I talked with a gubernatorial candidate who was recently in Petersburg, and I asked if that person would be interested in changing the override threshold, because Alaska has the highest in the nation threshold for overriding on appropriations, and I asked if this person would be interested in lowering that threshold and giving the Legislature more of a say, and I loved the answer, which was, ‘If I’m doing my job, there won’t be vetoes’, and I like that model of governance where the governor is present and actively engaged in helping to form ideas. You know, we talk about the 61st vote, 21 of 40 in the House, 11 of 20 in the Senate, and then you’ve got that 61st vote, and if you don’t have that vote, you end up with all these vetoes, but it’s really difficult to negotiate a direction that would make a bill agreeable to the governor if the governor is not there, and not engaged, and so the short answer is, it’s incredibly frustrating, and it makes it difficult to want to keep working on things, because you just really don’t know what’s going to happen in the end.

CoastAlaska: And kind of along those lines, moving on to education, which is, you know, you, your career was in education for decades.  At this point, we have what the Legislature approved, right? What you, as lawmakers, agreed to. So, first, like, how do you feel about what you agreed to? And then, secondly, we don’t know at this point, right, what the governor might do or not do.

Himschoot: I’m excited about what was approved with the caveat that one-time funding is just generally not as reliable for school districts. So it, you know, it helps in a pinch. No district is unhappy to get the additional support, but it isn’t something you can go to the bank on. You can’t retain programs – you can for a year – but you can’t really build your bench, you can’t really retain teachers and work with them to help them become better teachers, because you just don’t know, you don’t know how long you’ll be able to keep them, so that’s a continuing frustration, but the overall 144 million, if the price of oil stays high, it’s about a third of our budget comes from oil, and so when the prices go up and prices go down, it has a huge impact on what the state can do. But if that price stays solid, it’s, you know, that’s I think it’s about, something like $470 per student when it runs through the formula, so that will be certainly helpful, and the other wonderful thing. House Bill 28 is a bill that does a number of different things in education, but I think the part I’m most excited about is it sets up a formula for funding energy, and so this year I think it’s about 29 million that’s going to go into reimbursing districts for their energy costs, so that’s heat and electricity, and then in the future, the idea, the intent is to fund 100% of those costs, so right now districts are having to pull the money for heating their buildings and the electricity that they use out of the money they get for educating students, the base student allocation, they take that money and they use it for everything in the district, including energy, and this formula allows the Legislature to target one thing and take one thing out of the other funding stream. So, if we’re unable to raise the BSA [Base Student Allocation] significantly, at least more of what we are providing through the BSA will go to classrooms, educators, programs.

CoastAlaska: Is there anything you wanted to touch on for the specific communities that you represent in terms of this year’s session?

Himschoot: You know, there’s $105 million going into the 33 top school major maintenance projects, and that has, I think, funding for two projects in Petersburg, and funding for a project down in Craig, finishing up their middle school remodel, I think, is where that money is going to go in Craig. And then there’s quite a bit of funding for Mount Edgecumbe High School, and I think everybody can agree some upgrades are needed there, and I think Senator [Bert] Stedman did work with Governor Dunleavy to kind of make sure that the money will go where we’re hoping it will go, and then there’s renewable energy projects. I can’t remember how many we funded, but Petersburg, and I should say, the SEAPA third turbine is in that list, so that was something that they were very worried about. That is included. There’s funding for Stratton Library in Sitka to go to the court system. I think a lot of people in Sitka are curious what’s happening with that building. It’s been sitting empty for quite some time, so it’ll be interesting to see how that develops in the future. The Alaska Seafood Marketing [Institute] is going to get 6 million, and then there’s going to be 6 million, also going to the ATIA, the Alaska Travel Industry Association, I think, and so trying to grow markets, right, trying to grow that seafood market and our tourism market as well. So one of the great things about having a little bump in oil prices, as difficult as that makes things for everyday Alaskans, right. Our cost of living is going to go up, and we feel that in individual household budgets a whole lot. But one of the things that I think is good about our budget is we’re trying to – about the Legislature’s budget this year – is we’re trying to target where the needs are. So, while it’s only $1,000 dividend, that is a kind of a historic average, but then there’s also a $200 energy relief check that will go with that. We also are increasing funding to senior benefits and to heating assistance, so we’re trying to make sure that a little bit of that windfall of funding goes to people who most need it. We also expanded the infant learning program. We’re one of the last states to change our criterion from 50% delay to 25% delay. So, until we made this change, an Alaskan toddler, say a two-year-old, has to be functioning at a one-year-old level to get support through the infant learning program. We’ve now made that a 25% delay instead of 50% so kids who really need it will get help sooner. There’s one other great thing for Sitka: if the price of oil stays above $80 a barrel up through the first half of FY 27 – so that would basically be the rest of this calendar year – we’ll be able to finish up with the request for the Mariculture Training Facility that they have there, and say, I think it was half funded last year, and the other half will come this year, if that price of oil stays strong. And then there are some upgrades, also for the Craig to Klawock bike path, the Kake Ferry Terminal Rehabilitation, Kake Road resurfacing, Sitka airport lighting, and the Klawock Master Plan update. So, again, that relief or that help support is being shared across the region. I’m really grateful for that, and then my personal legislation that got through, I had a few get through, but for well over a decade, the Alaska Invasive Species Partnership has said the number one thing the state can do, apart from funding – funding always helps – but apart from funding, the number one thing we can do is provide, create a state council on invasive species, and that bill was a Senate bill that was in companion to my House bill, got through, and so that will be pending with the governor very soon, and that will, I think, you know, we have Elodea and Northern Pike, not where it should be, but for us here in Southeast, it’s definitely going to be green crabs are something that we’re really needing to take a closer look at.

CoastAlaska: All right. Well, is there anything you wanted to touch on with fisheries in the session?

Himschoot: Yeah, something that I’m really excited about is a bill that, when I first came to Petersburg and met with the Petersburg Vessel Owners Association, I was learning my way in fisheries – I still am – but they were very clear that the conflict of interest bill would be beneficial, and that bill passed and was signed into law this year. So that means that when you have somebody with expertise on the Board of Fisheries, they will be able to deliberate, which they couldn’t previously. They just will not be able to vote, and I think there’s a bit of a question mark on whether they’ll be able to amend, but for right now, we know that they’ll at least be able to stay at the table, so that the entire board can benefit from their expertise, experience. So, that, I think, was a really big deal, because that bill’s been around something like a decade, so that was a good one to get through. And then we have somebody on the Board of Fisheries again from Southeastern Alaska, it’s somebody who worked for EC Phillips and Ketchikan and is now in mariculture, Paul Cyr. So I’m really excited to have another Southeast voice on the Board of Fisheries again.

Russell Houston and Justin DeFilippis from the Balourdet Quartet join KCAW to talk about what performing means to them ahead of their opening night concert on Friday, June 5, at Harrigan Centennial Hall. They discuss where they met, how the quartet got its name, and the joy of community engagement through music. Listen to the conversation here:

Reine Pavlik meets me at a pavilion wedged between Yakutat’s elementary and high school. While its roof shields Pavlik from the glaring sunlight above, the space offers little protection against the wind blowing away discarded cans. 

She’s carrying armfuls of fabric, brought from a nearby classroom she’s working in. She spreads the garments out across a table, revealing a variety of nearly-completed Tlingit tunics – regalia she designed for herself and her two daughters and moccasins she made for a friend as part of an art trade. She’ll soon pack these items up to take with her to Celebration in Juneau, a biannual gathering of Indigenous communities across Southeast.

Each piece tells a story about its wearer, from beaded animals signifying the wearer’s clan, to hidden details commemorating her daughter’s love of blueberries and her friend’s passion for the Seattle Seahawks.   

While she puts the finishing touches on each piece, she’s also preparing to begin construction on her next project. Last December, Pavlik was one of fifty artists across Alaska awarded a $10,000 grant from the Rasmuson Foundation to complete a short-term artistic project of their choice. As a first-time applicant who was initially hesitant to apply, Pavlik was thrilled with the opportunity. 

“I was so happy and shocked that I had gotten it,” says Pavlik. “You don’t really have too many opportunities where you get money to do projects that that have been in your head for so long.”

As an experienced seamstress who has created collections for a wide variety of fashion shows across Alaska under her brand Alaska Soles, Pavlik knew she wanted to develop a 12-piece collection. Initially, she wanted to recreate what Tlingit communities wore pre-colonization, outside of regalia. Over the course of a three month research project, she found that the historical knowledge of everyday clothing was really limited, which made drawing inspiration for the collection challenging. So, she shifted her focus to adapt Tlingit regalia into everyday wear, providing a modern adaptation of Tlingit formline and patterns. 

“I’m looking at doing a coat collection,” says Pavlik. “I’m feeling like coats might be the most relevant to Yakutat, but also Southeast and Alaska in general, because I really want this to be a collection that people can wear in every day attire, and not just for ceremonies or one-time events.”

Pavlik says the research she put into developing her tunics came in handy as she brainstormed how to accomplish that. 

“Some things that I’ve done in the past, like this V right here [on a tunic], that’s really traditional in Tlingit tunics for Yakutat, because of the Athabascan influence that traditionally Yakutat has had,” says Pavlik. “I’ve made a graduation stole that had sort of the V that looked reminiscent of the tunic in the V, and then I made this black leather piece with seal skin where the V was on the top right here on the shirt portion.”

As she moves to the design phase of her project, Pavlik hopes to gain further inspiration at Celebration, from talking with elders to observing how attendees represent their cultural pride through clothing outside of traditional-wear. 

“So much of Celebration is going and being proud of who you are,” says Pavlik. “So if you’re not wearing your regalia because you’re dancing, you’re wearing a awesome bandana because it’s got formline all over it, or something like that.” 

Throughout her artistic career, Pavlik has prioritized making pieces out of traditional materials like sealskin and sea otter pelt, as well as second-hand materials, like old clothes and tablecloths gifted from community members. She says this approach not only prevents her from contributing to the negative impacts of fast fashion, but also roots her pieces in her hometown. 

“I feel like Yakutat is so artistically talented. We have so much talent, left and right, everyone here is doing a craft almost at any given point in the day,” says Pavlik. “And so I feel like a lot of my work is a reflection of the community that I come from, and I’m constantly inspired by the people around me.” 

She hopes her collection will enable folks to easily rock their pride in Indigenous resiliency year-round, with each piece held together by her love for her Yakutat community, stitch by upcycled-stitch.

Sitka Trail Works’ Emily Pound and Ben Hughey join KCAW to discuss the organization’s history and mission ahead of National Trails Day on Saturday. They welcome volunteers to join them this Saturday to help improve the Cross Trail’s drainage at the Kramer Avenue Trailhead. Listen to the conversation here: 

Raven News is excited to announce our 2026-2027 Sarah Evangeline Hughes News Resident. Lauren Salemo hails originally from New Jersey, and recently graduated with a degree in journalism from Northeastern University. Salemo joined KCAW for the Morning Interview to introduce herself and discuss her plans to hit the ground running as Sitka’s newest reporter. Listen here: