KCAW

“She’s adorable. You’re gonna fall in love. It’s kind of hard not to,” says Maia Carter, the Curriculum Coordinator for the Sitka Sound Science Center. She leads me down the stairs to show me the aquarium’s newest resident. Foreshadowing lines the hall on the walk over, from newly purchased octopus plushies on the merchandise table, to a whiteboard attached to a door sharing the Lingít word of the day “Naakw,” which is translated by the adorable octopus drawing below it.

The red and beige giant pacific octopus sits on the rocky wall in the oval tank farthest from the aquarium’s entrance, elevated from her tank mates. Her suckers stick on the glass to help her balance. Since her arrival at the Science Center in January , the octopus has grown to 12 times her initial size, yet she is still nowhere near as large as she will eventually become. An adult giant pacific octopus can have an arm span of at least 15 to 16 ft.

For the past few weeks, the Science Center has hosted a voting-bracket contest to determine what the octopus will be named. 32-randomly selected names from donors, staff, and programming participants were listed for participants to vote off one-by-one. For aquarist Matt Wilson, it was very fulfilling to see how excited Sitkans were during the whole process.

“It’s been really fantastic seeing the community engagement and people stopping me on the street to be like, ‘What’s the bracket this week?’ ‘What’s what’s your pick?’ ‘What’s going on?’,” says Wilson. “Everybody always wants to know, and that’s been fantastic.”

The final showdown came on March 4th, when Sitkans were faced with the top two contenders: Clementine vs Matilda. Carter was pleased with the finalists that Sitkans chose, with each name encapsulating a different valued trait of the octopus.

“Clementine, I think represents how adorable she truly is and what a delight it is to be able to see her and interact with her,” says Carter. “Matilda, I do think, represents her sassier side, or her more stubborn side.”

Carter says that there was a 50/50 divide amongst staff as to which name they hoped the octopus would get. As somebody who has worked closely with the octopus since her arrival at the Science Center, Wilson was firmly on Team Matilda, as he felt the name best captured her “troublemaker” personality. Additionally, the name carries a lot of sentimentality to him.

“That name was pitched by our our aquarium science club, and so that was really nice for us, just because I would love to see those students to be able to get a little bit more out of their time here, even though they’ve spent a lot of time here already,” said Wilson.

As for the final result, with over 100 voters contributing to the final poll, it was a roughly 60%-40% vote in favor of Clementine.

“We’re very excited that she has a reasonable and cute name,” says Carter. “And we’re excited to post it on signage and let people who visit the aquarium know that this is the name that the community chose for this octopus.” 

Next to Clementine’s tank, Jesuit Volunteer Stephanie Morris is siphoning the aquarium’s interactive touch tank, filled with a variety of friendly starfish and sea urchins. Morris regularly interacts with Clementine through the education programming they help run, as well as visiting her during their personal time. Given their work with the aquarium science club, Morris was on team Matilda, yet they have a lot of hope for Clementine’s future with her new name.

“We associate that octopus feel emotions very differently than humans, but orange is their happy color, that orange or red,” says Morris. “So hopefully she’s a happy octopus.”

While Wilson didn’t get the outcome he was hoping for, he is glad Sitkans were able to make their voices heard throughout the voting process. Looking ahead to the future, Clementine is going to continue rapidly growing, and will be moved to a larger tank. And while she will eventually grow to a point where she will be released back into the wild, Science Center staff are excited to continue welcoming visitors to meet Clementine and to engage more with learning about octopuses and the qualities that make them so unique.

Editor’s Note (3-13-26): Headline has been updated to reflect how octopuses have arms rather than tentacles

Last fall, a group of alumni and a handful of former and current staff raised concerns about conditions at Mt. Edgecumbe High School. They said a high number of students were being treated for suicidal ideation, and staffing and budget cuts meant less access to mental health services. They said enrollment was dropping precipitously.

A group of lawmakers visited the school in February, and found the facilities warranted additional scrutiny, with leaks, exposed wires, and a rat living in the gymnasium that students named Tiptoes.

Superintendent David Langford told the Alaska Board of Education and Early Development on March 10 that 104 students have left the school as of March. That’s about 25% percent higher than normal. While he said there are a lot of reasons students leave, he attributed the deteriorating facilities and longtime funding cuts. 

“This is a problem decades in the making of funding not coming through, projects not being managed, maintenance not being up kept, and funding being cut. I think six, seven years ago, we had seven maintenance people, and today we have one-and-a-half,” Langford said. “And keeping up with a campus that size, with one and a half people, they do an amazing job, but they just can’t do everything that needs to be done. So it is a funding issue for Mt. Edgecumbe.”

Langford gave similar remarks in February to the House and Senate Education committees alongside Education Commissioner Deena Bishop. They highlighted the improvements they’ve made, like replacing dorm room furniture and upgrading bathrooms, and maintenance needs they’re working to address, including replacing the roof and ventilation system for the boys dorm in May. 

“Those photographs were pretty deplorable and saddening to see, because that isn’t the Edgecumbe that I remember, so I’m glad that a lot of those are being addressed,” said board member Pamela Dupras, a Mt. Edgecumbe alumni.

Langford was hired as superintendent last year after already accepting a job overseeing the Chatham School District. The state board approved his appointment and Chatham agreed to him taking on the second job. Then, last month, Mt. Edgecumbe’s alumni advisory board voted 4-3 to recommend the state reopen the hiring process, this time with input from the board and other stakeholders.

Dupras said that the board had received feedback about reopening the position, but also had received positive input on the progress officials made addressing issues at the school.

“Because we have been receiving emails, and the emails ask for recall, for the superintendent, and the second part of that was the [ad hoc] committee” she said. “What I’m hearing is we are getting a lot of input from the community, [and] a lot of things are being addressed. So what are the continued issues, if these things are being addressed, that you are facing?”

Commissioner Bishop said much of the recent feedback about the school has been positive, and a lot of the issues that remain are “adult issues.”

As concerns come in we go and address them,” Bishop said. “Anyone who works in a school, I don’t want to offend them, but myself included, a lot of school issues are adult issues, and not children issues. And I would say a lot of these concerns were more about adults than they were students, and what they were were receiving. So I do believe that, you know, that we’re moving forward with sorting out the adult issues and moving forward in the right direction for kids.”

She said while some advisory board members were interested in reopening the superintendent hire and being involved in the hiring process, she believed it would be a “critical error.” She said Langford was the right fit given his background in business and history with the school, and said she didn’t include the advisory board in the process because the hire had to happen quickly. 

“There was a reason why David was selected to be able to bring Mt. Edgecumbe, pairing what had been done on the cultural side, bringing that strength back, to the management side and other leadership, is a need there,” Bishop said. “I did exercise what I can. Folks that know me know when there’s time to hire, we do engage a larger group. But this was critical. School needed to be opened.” 

While the state’s board of education did not signal any plans to reopen hiring for the school’s top position, it did move forward with one of the advisory committee’s recommendations– the formation of an ad hoc committee for the school. The temporary committee will be comprised of students, staff, alumni, and other stakeholders who will spend the spring and summer gathering information on the school, and will return to the Board of Education next fall with its findings and recommendations. The board approved the formation of the committee unanimously. 

Saturday, March 14, artists will perform their original work at the grand finale of the 31st season of The Grind. Jay Bradley and Jeanne Stolberg joined KCAW for the Morning Interview to discuss the Original Artist Grind, which will be hosted at the Sitka Performing Arts Center.

Bare Stage Collective theater company will present an original murder mystery dinner theater production “Ship Happens: A Murder at Sea” 7 p.m. Friday, March 20, at Harbor Mountain Brewing company. Rach Roach and Logan Bradford joined KCAW for the Morning interview to discuss the upcoming show, which was written by a cast of six and takes place on a cruise ship. Listen to the conversation here:

Sitka is getting a new full-time police chief. The Sitka Assembly approved the promotion of Lieutenant Mike Hall to the position at its meeting Tuesday night (3-10-26). Hall says he’s hoping to build an environment of trust with the community and within his department.

The Sitka Police Department has been actively searching for a permanent full-time chief since former interim police chief Robert Baty stepped down last summer after six years on the job. Longtime trooper academy commander Chad Goeden stepped in to lead the department while the city continued its search for Baty’s replacement. 

Assistant Municipal Administrator Josh Branthoover led the search. He said during the assembly meeting on March 10 that the process entailed “extensive vetting, multiple rounds of interviews and in person meet and greets with the community, along with survey and input opportunities from the public.”

“I set goals of identifying the candidate that was most likely to want to be intimately involved with our community, that possessed the servant leadership qualities needed to lead alongside their team, that displayed the humility to work with others through challenges, and the compassion and fortitude to wield the power entrusted to them,” Branthoover said. 

The city identified Mike Hall as the top candidate in October, but because of certification requirements, he was hired as a lieutenant and was sent to a police officer academy to become eligible for police service in Alaska. Branthoover says Hall has now successfully completed those requirements and is eligible to serve as Sitka’s police chief. 

“He brings decades of law enforcement experience and demonstrates the leadership qualities we are seeking in Sitka’s next police chief,” he said.

Hall finished his time with the academy in Fairbanks and arrived in Sitka about a month ago. 

“I love this place,” Hall told the assembly Tuesday. “It’s growing on me quick. I grew up as a family of charter fishermen — a little warmer weather down in South Florida. And so this culture reminds me a little bit of Key West meets Appalachia, Tennessee meets Montana meets a little bit of everything. It’s a beautiful place with beautiful people. A safe place, for the most part, and everybody seems to like the police, and I’m going to do my best to keep it that way.”

Hall’s inheriting a department that’s seen a tumultuous decade, marked by high department turnover, several lawsuits brought by former officers that were settled out of court, and public outcry after police euthanized six shelter animals by gunshot in 2024. 

Assembly Member Katie Riley asked Hall how he would engage and build trust with the community moving forward. 

“How are you going to work in the next few months, but also throughout your tenure, to cultivate a culture of community-oriented policing, both yourself as the leader of the department and amongst the officers that you oversee?” she asked.

Hall said that recruiting is his top priority, since it’s hard to make progress without the staff in place to do so. When Hall steps into the new role, 12 of the department’s 27 positions will be vacant, according to the department, although three people are currently in training. He said he’d like to hire at least one investigator dedicated to serious crimes like domestic violence and sexual assault. Hall also wants to continue to raise officer morale and create an environment where staff want to come to work every day. 

“Police are a part of your community,” Hall said. “We’re not above it. We’re not below it. We’re equal to it, and it’s not us versus them. It’s all of us together working in a community to make it better. I don’t want to over police the community, and I don’t want to under police the community. There has to be a balance [where] we all work together coherently to make it a better place.”

Mayor Steven Eisenbeisz said it’s not common for the assembly to be involved in such a lengthy process to approve a department head. He said being so involved in choosing the police chief reflects how important the job is to the community. 

“The trust of the police department really is the trust of City Hall,” he said. “If the citizens don’t trust our police department, they don’t trust City Hall. They don’t trust the assembly, and all of that flows down. So this position is very much key to making everything flow in the department. And if you live up to the words that you were speaking earlier, we’re all going to be successful.”

The assembly unanimously approved Hall’s promotion, with a starting salary of $134,000. Hall starts on March 16.

After nearly 30 years, the Tongass Land Management Plan will be undergoing a major revision that will influence how the nation’s largest national forest will be managed for the next 30 years. Sitka Conservation Society’s Executive Director Andrew Thoms joins KCAW for the Morning Interview to discuss the potential changes to the plan, and how Sitkans can make their voices heard.

Fireweed Dance Guild presents an evening of dance 7 p.m. Saturday, March 7, at Sitka Performing Arts Center. Melinda McAdams and Ayer Christianson joined KCAW for the Morning Interview to discuss the upcoming show, which will feature six different pieces and multiple dance styles. Listen to the conversation here:

This March, Sitka Tribe of Alaska is offering a wide-variety of recurring and special one-off events. STA’s Communications Manager Cara Crain joins KCAW for the Morning Interview to share more about what STA members and other Sitkans can expect.

Black seaweed – Laak’ásk in Tlingit — hasn’t been documented much in the past. 

“It’s mentioned everywhere, but it’s a paragraph, a sentence in all these different ethnographic studies about Southeast Alaska and about Northwest Coast cultures. So really important resource, but nobody spent the time to actually document it, and that’s what I was asked to do,” said Dr. Kelly Monteleone, an underwater anthropologist at Sealaska Heritage Institute. 

She’s working on a multi-year project, largely funded by a $350,000 National Science Foundation grant, to determine if black seaweed is a cultural keystone species and document its cultural and environmental significance. 

Monteleone sees herself as a facilitator for the project. She’s brought together a team, including several Tlingit and Tsimshian researchers, to help her hold community meetings, to shadow field harvests, and conduct interviews in seven communities across Southeast: Sitka, Kake, Hoonah, Hydaburg, Ketchikan, Metlakatla, and Angoon. They’re hoping to include Klawock and Yakutat in the study if they get additional funding.

“We want to make sure we have the documentation, especially with things like the increase in mariculture. Not that we necessarily are thinking that people are going to start growing black seaweed, but as they start putting farms in places, is it going to affect people’s access [to] their existing black seaweed harvest locations?” Monteleone said. “As climate is changing, sea levels are rising, how is that going to affect people’s access to black seaweed? Where’s black seaweed gonna move to?” 

In recent years, traditional harvesters in British Columbia and Southeast Alaska say black seaweed has become more difficult to find and has been affected by a green slime. Researchers have linked the disappearance from the intertidal shoreline to an enormous hot water mass in the Northern Pacific known as The Blob that moved from the Gulf of Alaska down to California a little over a decade ago. As temperatures cooled in the following years, British Columbia’s seaweed started to rebound, but not like before. 

And both researchers and harvesters remain concerned that as the climate continues to change, the distribution and abundance of black seaweed is being impacted, affecting community wellbeing and food security. 

Charlie Skultka Jr., who teaches arts and culture classes in Sitka schools, says he can’t remember a time in his life when he didn’t go out and participate in black seaweed harvesting.

“It’s something that has always been on our table and in our pantry, and it is one of the cornerstone foods to our lifestyle,” Skultka said.

The 62-year-old is Haida, Sioux and Ojibwa. His family migrated to Sitka in the 1950s, and every spring, they would take a boat to large rocks offshore, and harvest the black seaweed’s long, hair-like fronds. 

“I have seen many changes,” he said. “I’ve seen a change in climate. I’ve seen a change in abundance, and also in quality. There’s so many factors at play right now that have to do with our ocean harvesting.”

Skultka is concerned that changes in water temperature, increased vessel traffic, and sewage discharge into local waters is starting to affect black seaweed. He says that’s why Monteleone’s research is so important. By talking to harvesters about the changes they’ve seen over the years and documenting local knowledge, communities can get a baseline for what’s going on and make it “abundantly clear” that it’s a resource that people continue to rely on.

“It’s absolutely a keystone species,” Skultka said. “It’s one of the cornerstones of our diet, as is herring and salmon and all these other resources. To recognize it any other way is foolish. It has been going on for thousands of years.”

As costs rise for fuel, rent, and imported groceries across many small communities in Alaska, Skultka says subsistence foods are as important as ever and need to be protected for the future. 

“It’s getting to the point now, without doing these things sustainably and being able to practice our subsistence harvesting, pretty soon, no Alaskans will be able to afford to live in Alaska,” he said.

Monteleone says her team will be in Sitka, Kake and Hydaburg this spring to do field harvests and interviews with local harvesters and processors. After the field visits are complete, they will be writing a book, part of their Box of Knowledge series, about the research, which she hopes will be complete by late 2028. 

Chef Renee Jakaitis Trafton stands at the ready in the kitchen of her restaurant, Beak. Warm afternoon sunshine spills through a window onto the counter of neatly organized ingredients and cooking supplies. Bite-sized pieces of raw fish are on a cutting board, which Jakaitis Trafton will soon prepare into one of Beak’s trademark dishes: chili-crisp marinated Black Cod Tips.

Located at the end of Lincoln Street in downtown Sitka, Beak has become a beloved staple for many Sitkans since it opened nearly a decade ago. And now, the rest of the country might be catching on too. Back in December, a representative from USA Today emailed Jakaitis Trafton, informing her that she is one of 10 Alaska restaurants nominated for the Best Restaurants in Alaska list for 2026. Jakaitis Trafton says that Beak’s high social media engagement probably played a partial role in its nomination. But, also being one of the few restaurants open in Sitka year-round creates unique opportunities for connection.

“In the summer, it’s thrilling, because we have all these tourists and you might really make someone’s day if they’ve never had king salmon before, or black cod or rockfish, and they have a great experience. They might remember Sitka and their meal forever, which is really special,” said Jakaitis Trafton. “But then the winter is like, really quality, because sometimes you just know everyone in the dining room and you’re like, ‘Oh, hey, friends!’ It’s [like] a great hangout.”

When the newspaper’s list was first published in late January, readers were able to vote as to which of the 10 restaurants would earn the number one spot. The results were officially announced on Feb. 25, and Beak ended up in second place. And it’s not the only Sitka restaurant on the list. Ludvig’s Bistro, a Mediterranean-Alaska fusion restaurant, garnered enough votes to end up in fourth place. Owner and chef Edith Johnson says she feels incredibly proud that both restaurants made the top 5. 

“It just shows that Sitka is on the right trajectory, that we’re in just this culinary hub that maybe people don’t even realize. There are so many talented chefs on this island, and there’s so many amazing female chefs on this island,” said Johnson. “I just think it’s really special that with our lower population compared to Anchorage, that we could have two [Sitka restaurants] in the top five.”

Of course, one cannot describe Sitka’s food scene without bringing up seafood. Johnson takes great pride in how Ludvig’s is able to source native Alaska ingredients in cooking up iconic Mediterranean dishes, from weathervane tuscan scallops to paella made entirely from local seafood. But beyond the food itself, Johnson says that a unique aspect of Sitka’s dining culture is the relationships built between local fishermen and customers.

“[Customers] want to see fishermen’s names on the menu. They want to know where their food has come from,” said Johnson. “This sea-to-table and this farm-to-table movement is not only just for people’s health. It’s also just to support your local community and everyone else that’s in it, and to be able to say, ‘I know who caught my spot prawns. I know where my clams came from. I know where my scouts came from.’ It’s so special and very uniquely Southeast Alaska.”

Back at the Beak kitchen, Jakaitis Trafton plates the cooked black cod tips, with baby bok choi and rice that is pressed together in the shape of a star. 

The restaurant is downstairs of Raven Radio. So, I head back up to HQ to dig into the meal. Offering to share my food with whoever at the station is interested, I am shortly joined at the table by Lakota Harden, who is in the middle of her popular radio show, “Indigenous and Other Expressions.” 

“The tips have, well, of course, you can’t ruin tips, right? But they’re so good,” said Harden. “And I love the extra zing that’s in there is a bit of a bite, which I love. It’s so cool because I didn’t expect it when I first sat down, I thought, ‘Oh, wow, that was a good surprise in my mouth, the bok choy is still crispy and yet, well cooked.'”   

It’s safe to say that Harden loves Beak. She says she directed tourists to visit the restaurant back when she worked for the Greater Sitka Chamber of Commerce, and even “bugged” anybody who would listen to vote for Beak in the USA Today competition. Ultimately, what drives Harden to be so passionate about uplifting local restaurants like Beak and Ludvig’s is their commitment to serving the larger Sitka community, from Beak providing free meals in 2020 during the pandemic to Johnson cooking school lunches as part of Sitka Conservation Society’s Fish-to-Schools program. As she heads back into the live studio, she puts on her headphones, fades out the end of the song and turns up her microphone.

“I think that that’s what I love the most about these restaurants, is they really do try to care for the community,” said Harden. “So I just want to say congratulations to them, and we’re really proud of our Sitkan family.”

With their shared accomplishment under their belts, Jakaitis Trafton and Johnson remain focused on preparing their restaurants for the upcoming summer season, eager to give visitors and locals alike a taste of what makes their community special.