Aurora Randolph wades in the center of the deep end of the Blatchley Middle School pool. Over by the pool’s edge, one of Randolph’s students takes a deep breath before swimming toward her. She watches closely. 

“You kept that form perfect the whole time,” she tells the student. “That was great.”

But she’s not leading a Blatchley Middle School swim practice. This is an adult mermaid class.

After an hour, Randolph tells her students to take a breather. “Get some water, stretch your legs out, stretch your ankles out, make sure they’re feeling good.”

The mer-students need a stretch because they’re probably not used to swimming this way. After a 10-minute break, it’s time to slide into their gear and head back to the deep end. The swimmers slip their feet into monofins. They’re like a pair of flippers except their feet are bound together by a piece of rubber shaped like a dolphin tail. 

Randolph describes the next step of suitting up like “trying to put on pants when you don’t want to get the pant leg wet.”

She bunches up a thin spandex sleeve speckled with scales and pulls it over her fins. Her tail shimmers with a mosaic of pinks, purples, and blues with frills flowing from the tail’s fluke. 

“We’ve been kind of joking at the pool that I am now a professor of the mermaid arts at the pool for Mermaid Academy,” she says.

Randolph works for the city’s Parks and Recreation Division. Last week, she taught kids how to swim with mermaid tails. 

“And then a few people reached out that were like, ‘Is there an age limit on the kid class?’”

Erika Apathy was one of those people. She wanted to try something she’d never done before, and mermaid class seemed just the thing. Apathy says she swam when she was in school, “but it’s totally different, right, to have your feet kind of stuck together.”

During their first lesson, Randolph focused on basic mermaid mechanics: how to properly propel and quickly ditch their tails in case something went wrong. Now, her students look to master the artistry of pencil dives, tail flips, and bubble kisses.  

“You’re going to take a nice big breath, you’re going to go down, and then you’re just going to blow out all those bubbles and push them out to the world like this,” she explains.

The pool goes quiet as the students dunk their heads below the surface to watch Randolph’s underwater demonstration through their goggles. 

“Water is probably gonna go up your nose on this one,” she warns after coming back up for air. 

Randolph says mermaiding is as much a technical sport as it is an art form. And after two days of two-hour classes, her students seem to have mastered both aspects. 

“Now we have graduates of Mermaid Academy,” Randolph says. “Class of summer 2026 and the start of the official Sitka Southeast Mermaid Pod.”

One of those graduates is Ashlynn Emanoff. She says she signed up for the adult mermaid class after seeing how much fun her younger sister had during the kids’ session. Now, they have a new way to spend time together. 

“That was one of the first things [my sister] said once her class was finished,” Emanoff says. “She said, ‘We can swim together, and oh, it was so cute.”

Randolph says she’s been a mermaid for a decade, mostly in warmer places, like Florida and St. Croix. Whether she’s swimming in springs or scuba diving next to sea turtles, she has always felt most at home in the water.

“Being a mermaid feels so correct in the most magical way possible for me.”

Sitka’s new mermaids glide back to the shallow end, take off their tails, and hop out of the pool. As they head to the locker room, Randolph’s glad she invited them to be part of her world. 

Hailing from Greece, Katerina Chatzinikolau was named the first woman concertmaster in her country’s history. After meeting Sitka Music Festival Director Zuill Bailey in Athens three years ago, violinist Chatzinikolau finally makes her way to Sitka for the festival’s 55th season. Bailey and Chatzinikolau join KCAW to share what performances are coming up and what music means to Chatzinikolau. Listen to the conversation here:

Bill Hill- “My name is Bill Hill, lifelong Alaskan, Dena’ina Athabaskan, and I’m from Naknek, out in Bristol Bay, home of the greatest sockeye salmon run in the world…had some interesting looks when I said that here today earlier.”

KCAW- “From our fishing fleet?”

Hill- “Yes, sockeye salmon run in the world!“

Bill Hill has worked as a commercial fisherman for decades. He runs a small business with his wife, Diane, and he’s worked in construction. He served on the board of Paug-Vik Incorporated, Naknek’s Alaska Native village corporation, for 15 years, and spent a quarter of a century in education, as a teacher, administrator and superintendent in  communities across the state. In a joint interview with KCAW and the Sitka Sentinel on Tuesday (6-9-26) he said he’s really concerned about the state’s future, especially affordability for the next generation.

“I’m really worried that Alaska is not going to be a place where they can work hard and build good lives. I’m really worried about our nation as well,” Hill said. “We see tax on the rule of law and unchecked corruption, and I just think some things need to be done about it.”

Hill’s experience is wide and varied, and he thinks that’s something Alaskans will value at the polls. 

“Right now we have a congressman who, you know, has lived a pretty privileged lifestyle and is associated with pretty significant money, I think,” Hill said. “Alaskans are not just this sort of, like, this one set person, right? I mean, we all do so many things in Alaska, and I think Alaskans appreciate somebody who can represent that.” 

Of the 14 challengers to incumbent Republican Nick Begich’s congressional seat, Hill is expected to top the list alongside Anchorage Democrat Matt Schultz. Hill is running as a nonpartisan candidate, and that’s not new for this race. 

“I didn’t learn until jumping into this race that I’m like a lot of Alaskans. Most Alaskans, really, over 60% of us do not align with the Republican or Democratic Party, and you know we need representation too, and I think there are a lot of people who are in the Democratic or Republican Party who would like another option as well,” Hill said. “So I didn’t decide to run as an independent. In fact, it was a real consideration when I was thinking about jumping into this race. Is there a path to victory for an independent?”

Hill spent his time in Sitka meeting and talking with locals about issues that are important to them, like the Tongass National Forest. When it comes to Alaska’s resources, he said he’s pro-development, but Congress needs to consult with Alaskans on every project that happens on their lands. 

“I’ve heard somebody who’s really interested in making sure that the Roadless Rule remains intact, and then I’ve heard other people who say that we need to make sure that we have more access to logging, and, you know, that crosses the boundary between different communities and different organizations, and so I think that’s a conversation that the local communities need to have, but it needs to be supported by your congressman,” Hill said. “So if there’s an opportunity for a resource to be developed as a congressman, I’d bring that to Alaskans to see what their thoughts were on it, and we would move forward with it if it’s good for Alaskans.” 

He would support and advocate for the rural subsistence priority on federal lands and updates to the Magnuson Stevens Act to address issues with trawling.

“Ensuring that Alaskans have a real seat at the decision making table that really represent all voices in Alaskans, not just industry advocates,” Hill said. “So, promoting legislation like that would be a priority.”

He supports federal funding for public radio, and said Alaska’s state-run ferries are an essential service that should receive federal dollars. He would work to secure those funds to bolster the ferry schedule and restore access to ports like Prince Rupert.

“If we took a major road anywhere else in Alaska, and we cut it off all of a month except for one day, what would be the outcome? We’d have huge outcry, right?” So, the marine highway system is very important to Southeast Alaska, and I think it needs to be supported,” Hill said.

But affordability tops his list, and he said he’d work in Congress to reduce the cost of healthcare and childcare, and energy. 

“Right now, you know, we have somebody who seems to be more interested in providing tax cuts to corporations and billionaires, and that’s where the money goes when they cut important programs to Alaskans, so I think we have a lot of work to do,” Hill said. “I think there are a lot of people who’d love to stay in their hometowns. I think there are a lot of people who love to stay in Alaska, but they’re being forced out.”

He said he’s centered most of his life around building partnerships, and believes, if elected, he’ll collaborate well with Alaska’s senators. 

“Regardless of who they are, whatever the name is, I’d work with the delegation, because we’re there for Alaska, we’re not there for ourselves,” Hill said. “And, oftentimes, I’ve found is that when you work in conjunction with other people with the same mission to serve the people, that you’re much more powerful.”

Hill spent a couple of days in Sitka, before heading back to Anchorage. Then he’ll go fishing before he’s back on the campaign trail again. 

The clear waters and maritime infrastructure along Alaska’s coasts make for prime conditions for mariculture, the cultivation of marine organisms like oysters, seaweed, and shellfish. Andrew Jylkka and Sara Ebersole join KCAW to discuss what opportunities mariculture can bring to the state and how Jylkka’s organization, Spruce Root, can help local farms get up and running. Listen to the conversation here:

The Sitka Assembly voted to allocate more than $1.1 million in retroactive federal funding to the Sitka School District at its meeting Tuesday night (6-9-26). The money comes from Secure Rural Schools, a program that supports schools surrounded by federal lands which don’t contribute to the local tax base. 

For the past two fiscal years, SRS funding lapsed. Then, last December, Congress renewed the funding for this year, along with retroactive payments for the missed ones. The money can be used for schools or roads, and in years past, the city usually split the money with the district 50/50. But this year, the assembly is going all-in on education. On Tuesday, the assembly voted to dedicate 100% of the federal funding received to schools, adding more than $800,000 to what it has already budgeted for the district. 

In the last budget cycle, some of the federal funding had been earmarked for the Public Works department for street maintenance, but the money didn’t come through until recently. 

“There are needs at the school district, there are needs at the city,” Mayor Steven Eisenbeisz said Tuesday. “I could argue the school district’s needs are larger. I could argue our potholes’ needs are larger.”

Municipal Administrator John Leach said the assembly expressed a desire to move the full amount to schools given their precarious funding situation next year. Even with last year’s state funding increase, school leaders say the money hasn’t kept up with the rising cost of education, and declining enrollment over the past two decades has also cut into the district’s bottom line.

The district was already facing a $1-2 million deficit in March, when staff discovered an accounting error to the tune of about $800,000 in unaccounted for expenses. In late April, the board approved a budget that cuts 8.5 positions, half of which are certified teachers. 

Eisenbeisz said this is a one-time disbursement for the district and he doesn’t want schools to rely on the full amount of pass-through funding in future years. He advised the school board to use the money wisely. 

“I understand the crutch is needed to bridge a gap, which may or may not be changing in future administrations at the state, but I don’t want them to become so assured of this and this funding level that that becomes an issue that binds future assemblies and future school boards to an unsustainable level,” he said.

Assembly Member Tim Pike agreed that the move is a rare, one-time occurrence, but said it was important for the assembly to take advantage of this opening to help the district. 

“This is a unique opportunity for the city to support the schools,” he said. “The needs are very large, and the state has not stepped up and done their part. So this is an opportunity to bridge us through into a hopefully better fiscal environment with a governor who would be more amenable to funding education and meeting the requirements for the state.”

Several assembly members said they support a continued push for Secure Rural Schools funding when meeting with Sitka’s congressional delegation in the future, saying the funds are important for both the district and the city.

Ultimately, the assembly voted unanimously in favor of the one-time allocation. It will consider the funding one last time before a final vote on June 23. 

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: