Matt Wilson has worked as the aquarist here for a few years. He manages the care of about 200 species in the aquarium. He says this stubby squid — also known as a dumpling squid, or Rossia pacifica — isn’t really a squid at all.

“With every, you know, group of animals, there’s some weirdos that are out on the fringes,” he said. “They are most closely related to cuttlefish, more than they are squid or octopus. But they are not quite cuttlefish.”

Wilson found the stubby squid by accident. In March, he was walking along the beach next to the Science Center, looking for live crabs to feed to aquarium animals.

“I think she was trying to go after shrimp that were eating the herring eggs right after herring spawn,” he said. “She was only in a couple inches of water when I spotted her.”

Stubby squid usually live in deeper waters and burrow in the sand during the day. Wilson says finding one out in the open like that was a sign she was in bad shape. 

“She was a dark purple, which means that all of her color-changing cells had completely relaxed,” he said. “So she probably was almost sort of unconscious at the time, and she could barely move, and she couldn’t burrow in the sand.”

Wilson scooped the stubby squid up in a bucket. Over several days, he adjusted the temperature and salt levels in the tank to better resemble a typical habitat. Wilson said the animal stayed ghost white for two days — a bad sign — but then changed colors and started burrowing again.

“That was our first sign that she probably was going to start to improve, and from there, she has continued to make a full recovery from that, and is now doing all the normal behaviors we’d expect,” he said.

It was a fortuitous outcome – Wilson happens to be one of a handful of aquarium biologists with experience caring for the species. He first worked with them more than a decade ago, learning from guidelines left by the late octopus specialist Roland Anderson. Anderson cared for stubby squid during a three-decade career at the Seattle Aquarium — one of the only public aquariums that displays the species.

“It was about probably four years off and on working with these animals before I really felt like I was getting positive, good interactions with them,” Wilson said.

Kathryn Kegel is a curator at the Seattle Aquarium. She says stubby squid don’t often show up in aquariums because they can be hard to find, don’t live long, and they’re not easy to keep – they’re really picky eaters. 

“They hunt small crustaceans, and don’t always like to eat dead food,” she said.

Kegel says reviving an unhealthy stubby squid, like the one Wilson found, can be especially difficult. 

For Wilson, keeping the stubby squid alive and happy is a lot of work. He doesn’t often get to watch her hunt, but when he does, it’s quite a show. 

“They pop up completely out of the sand, start to basically hover and rise just above the sand and shoot those tentacles out really, really quickly, like just lightning speed, grab that animal, pull them back and bite it with their beak to immobilize and paralyze it,” he said.

Stubby squid typically live for one-and-a-half to two years. Wilson says that this particular pint-sized predator was already full-sized — a whopping three inches — when he found her. He estimates that she has another four-to-six months left.

“That’s the downside to working with cephalopods, is that they don’t live for very long in most cases,” he said.

After she dies, this stubby squid will be preserved as a learning tool. Wilson sees that as another way to respect the animal. 

“Skeletons, preservations, all of those are really important to me as somebody who wants to continue to respect that animal and have them continue to teach even after death,” he said.

He considers his relationship with the animals as a collaborative one – and he says that’s why he avoids giving pet names to animals in his care. 

“These are not my pets,” he said. “These are my colleagues.”

Wilson also hopes to expand the existing care manual for the species, sharing what he’s learned, so that other biologists can effectively care for this not-quite-a-squid, not-quite-a-cuttlefish creature. 

In the meantime, visitors can meet the stubby squid at the Sitka Sound Science Center.   

It would be a challenging place for a search and rescue operation. But that’s exactly what is happening on this Wednesday in late April – well, sort of. 

I spot Lieutenant Commander Jared Carbajal standing on the edge of a steep slope about a mile up the road. He’s watching intently as two men swing a floppy-bodied mannequin in a Coast Guard jumpsuit back and forth. With a final swing, they release the mannequin down the jagged hillside, where it tumbles before settling just above the waterline. They cheer.

Carbajal, along with Lieutenant Commander Mick Klakring, helped organize this Search and Rescue Exercise, or SAREX. It’s an annual event that brings together the US Coast Guard and Air Force, the Royal Canadian Air Force, and volunteers from regional search-and-rescue organizations to train with simulated disaster scenarios. The agenda for this week includes rescuing people from an ATV wreck on Kruzof Island and a plane crash in Nakwasina Bay. Today, Carbajal is preparing for a mass casualty scenario. He explains as we drive up the road, looking for spots to drop more mannequins. 

“What we’re simulating is that it was a tour bus, and the bus got swept away in a landslide, and everybody’s stranded,” he says.

There will be 38 total victims scattered along the two miles of road. Five are mannequins, and the other 33 are Coast Guard volunteers. I meet two of them along the road, sipping from thermoses. 

“We’re dehydrated, or hung over,” one says. “Yeah, hungover, dehydrated, all the same.”

The other lies down on the gravel, demonstrating. “I’ll lay out, and then I guess y’all will kind of just be like, ‘Hey, he’s dehydrated!'”

Back on the Sitka Coast Guard base, rescue crews are getting a pep talk from Commander Rand Semke before they head out. 

“Why do we do this?” he asks to a room full of American and Canadian first responders. “I can think of at least three reasons. Number one, it truly is fun. It’s professionally satisfying to do SAREXes.”

It’s the first time in three years that the Canadian crews have participated in the SAREX. He tells them that he hopes they take advantage of the opportunity to learn from one another. 

“We learn things that we would have never thought of from the Canadians,” he says. “We think we’re masters of all kinds of things in the search and rescue world, and then we hang out with our civilian counterparts from [Juneau Mountain Rescue] and Sitka [Search and Rescue]. We learn all kinds of new things.”

Abby Leatherman has been volunteering with Juneau Mountain Rescue for about five years. This is her first time participating in a SAREX. 

“We’re kind of coming into it not knowing quite what to expect, and so we just bring, you know, all of the gear that we anticipate,” she says, standing in front of a table piled high with ropes, litters, and emergency medical equipment.

She says she’s excited to see how the other crews operate. 

“I think it’s super valuable to do interagency work,” she says. “You get to know each other so that when the real mission comes up, we all know each other and trust each other.”

She’ll be riding in the Canadian CH-149 Cormorant helicopter, which towers over the MH-60 Jayhawks that the US team is using.

“I’ve never seen one quite this large, a Cormorant,” she says. “The ones we usually fly in are very, very small, just enough for, you know, two to four people. So, yeah, this is very different. I’ve never been able to stand up in a helicopter before.”

Adam Welsh is a search and rescue technician in the Canadian Royal Air Force. He’s also headed out in the Cormorant. Welsh says he’s excited to see how the US crew compares. 

“In the brief conversations I had yesterday with some of the rescue swimmers, it sounds pretty similar, to be honest,” he says. “Definitely sounds like there’s a lot of crossover at the end of the day. I guess we’re all playing the same game of trying to help people out.”

Back on the Katlian Bay Road, Carbajal gets a radio message that crews are leaving the base. Volunteers take final sips from their thermoses and slide into position under fallen logs and in drainage ditches, ready with stories of broken legs and hypothermia. A Coast Guard cutter motors into view in the bay below, ready to relay radio communications. The whir of helicopters slowly gets louder.

The first helicopter lands, and a team pours out in high-visibility gear, tiny orange dots on the expanse of gravel. US Air Force Pararescueman Jason Hughes is one of the first on the scene. He directs rescuers to walk in opposite directions along the road – they don’t know how many people are out there. 

As the team on foot sets out, radios buzz with messages from the cutter about survivors they can see from the bay. A US Jayhwawk helicopter hovers over an embankment, preparing to hoist the mannequin tossed down earlier. At one point, they even try to rescue me.

In about an hour, rescuers will get an alert saying that someone has activated an iPhone SOS signal from deep in the nearby woods, where a helicopter rescue might be more difficult. 

Carbajal says that locating those survivors and deciding how to get them out of the woods will be an extra challenge. 

“They have to pull out their GPS and use that GPS to go find them, you know, and then bring them out of the woods,” he says. “So just some different elements to it that we’re trying to train.”

Although today is a simulation, Carbajal says the stakes are real. He’s flown on missions where crews had to rely primarily on SOS signals to rescue survivors. He says it’s critical for crews to know how to use all the tools at their disposal – and how to make decisions when there isn’t a clear answer. 

“We add a level of, like, decision making and realism to be like, hey, there’s not always going to be a perfect cleared-out landing site,” he says.

At the end of the day today, crews will gather to debrief – on how they performed, and how they can do better tomorrow. 

On Sitka’s Kaagwaantaan Street, overlooking a busy waterway where fishing boats unload their catches and float planes glide in to land, there’s an unassuming gabled house with faded red siding. If you peer underneath the house, you’ll see charred wood nestled next to newer lumber – evidence of a 1953 fire that damaged parts of the 19th-century structure. 

The house is called Kaxátjaa Hít, or Shattering Herring House. Xéetl’ee Katelyn Stiles, who is Kiks.ádi and of the Shattering House, recently walked around it and took note of the fire-damaged wood. For her, the burn marks are part of the house’s story. 

“I still see that as, you know, our history,” she said. “That’s where Xéetl’ee, my namesake, gave birth. So, yeah, I just find it all really beautiful how it is.”

Clan houses like this one have historically served as cultural centers for Lingít people – places where members gathered for meetings, ceremonies, and even to give birth. But earlier this year, Stiles –  whose great-great-grandparents lived in Shattering Herring House – learned that it was slated for demolition. 

“It will always be a clan house”

In Lingít tradition, clan houses are passed down matrilineally and belong to all members. In the western legal system, properties often go to a spouse or children, who don’t belong to the same clan, so houses can fall out of clan ownership. Sometimes multiple clan members are on the deed, making renovation or demolition more difficult. 

Lduteen Jerrick Hope-Lang knows those challenges firsthand. Hope-Lang is of the Point House, a Kiks.ádi clan house in Sitka that was passed down via will and demolished in 1997. 

In 2022, Hope-Lang worked with the Point House’s legal heirs to acquire the land. It’s now held on behalf of the Kiks.ádi clan by a nonprofit organization, the Katlian Collective, with plans to rebuild. And last year, he helped bring national recognition to Sitka’s Indian Village as a historic endangered place.

“These are precious, and they’re worth saving,” he said. “By preserving these things, we’re more able to accurately tell the history as we see it.”

The Shattering House fell out of clan ownership, but Stiles said that doesn’t change its cultural value. 

“In my opinion, if it was a clan house, it will always be a clan house,” she said.

“Emotional and terrifying”

In February, Stiles learned through a meeting of the Sitka Historic Preservation Commission that the legal owner intended to sell the Shattering House to a couple who planned to demolish it and build residential housing on the land. 

“It was, of course, very emotional and terrifying,” she said. 

Stiles helped gather community and clan members to testify against the demolition. They reached out to the Sitka Tribe of Alaska, asking for them to weigh in. She connected with Hope-Lang, who met with his board of directors, trying to identify ways to help.

 In a Feb. 27 special meeting of the Historic Preservation Commission, 18 people testified, mostly against the sale and demolition of the house. 

“It really sort of brought us together,” Stiles said.  “We want our, you know, grandkids and their kids to know who they are.”

During the meeting, the Historic Preservation Commission recommended against the demolition. But as Stiles learned, they couldn’t actually stop it from happening. 

City and Borough of Sitka Planning Director Amy Ainslie said that under the city’s general code, the city didn’t have authority to deny the demolition permit on the basis of historic preservation. In a March 10 letter to the Historic Preservation Commission, she wrote that she approved the demolition permit “with an extremely heavy heart.” 

“Everything happened so quickly”

But on April 22, the legal owner agreed to sell the property to Katlian Collective on behalf of the Kiks.ádi clan. Hope-Lang said the nonprofit was able to reroute funds intended for the Point House restoration project to buy the Shattering House. 

“I think the ultimate end goal is, we’re stronger with this house standing next to ours,” he said. “So it doesn’t feel like it really pulls away at the end of the day.”

He said they haven’t figured out exactly what happens next. 

“Everything was happening so quickly,” he said. “Now we’re kind of in the process phase of how it will be used, how it will be restored, and really the Katlian Collective’s goal in this is to support the clan and what it wants to do. And ultimately, we just didn’t want to see it demolished.”

Hope-Lang said he hopes to get Sitka’s clan houses listed on the National Register of Historic Places. He envisions a future where all the houses in Sitka’s Indian Village have been restored.  

“I think it’s not outside the possibility of the 43 or 44 clan homes that existed there, that they couldn’t all be restored or rebuilt,” he said.

Stiles said she hopes to see the city and tribal governments collaborate on historic preservation of clan houses. She said it’s a “huge relief” that Shattering Herring House won’t be demolished — and that her young son will have a cultural space to grow up in. 

“He’s, you know, learning to sing and drum,” she said. “I’m so happy that he will have a clan house and know that he’s a part of that.”

Note: This story was corrected on May 12, 2025 to reflect that the Point House property was gifted to Jerrick Hope-Lang in 2022, not purchased.

Additionally, KCAW aired the following clarification: “In the original version of this story, we said that the Shattering Herring House fell out of clan ownership 25 years ago. While the deed to the property was indeed transferred 25 years ago, a clan leader continued to live in the house until about 2014.“

Recitals are 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday, May 10 at the Sitka Performing Arts Center. Tickets are available at fineartscamp.org and at the door.

The fun run will take place Saturday, May 10 at 10 a.m. Registration opens at 9:30 a.m. Community members interested in volunteering can sign up here.

Speaking to the crowd at the Crescent Harbor net sheds in downtown Sitka, local “May Day” protest organizer Mel Beadle lamented local programs impacted by federal funding cuts – like Sitka’s AmeriCorps program, which was eliminated last Friday.  

“We are told there’s no money for housing, there’s no money for AmeriCorps, there’s no money for school meals, but somehow they have condos and private jets and yachts, and they can fund endless genocidal war,” Beadle said.

Decked out in rain gear and carrying laminated signs, the group marched along Lincoln Street to Totem Square, where Beadle encouraged participants to hug each other. 

“Just like, give someone a hug and say, ‘I care about you’,” she said into a megaphone.  

Long-time Sitkan Howard Pendell said he was here to protest what he sees as human rights violations by the Trump administration. He carried a sign reading, “Are you next?”, a reference to a poem by a German pastor about Nazi Germany. 

“Are you next, meaning, ‘first they came for the socialists,'” he said, paraphrasing the poem. “‘I wasn’t a socialist, so I said nothing. Next they came for the trade unionists. I wasn’t a trade unionist so I said nothing. Next they came for the Jews. I wasn’t a Jew, so I said nothing. Then they came for me. There was no one left to speak.'”

Twenty-year-old Beatrice Perez said she’s been to at least 10 protests since the November 2024 election. 

“I am part of the working class, and I cannot live on the wage that I’m making right now, and that is the normal for everyone in America right now who is working class,” Perez said. “And everything that has been done in the past 100 days is only hurting us more. I stand for our unions. I stand for people like me.”

The march picked up a couple of new participants along the way – Anne Chippendale is visiting from Australia on a Holland America cruise with her husband. She said she had been planning to visit Fortress of the Bear today, but changed her mind when she saw the protest. 

“I could just feel the love here, and I can feel the despair as well,” she said, tearing up. “You know, I can see it on people’s faces.”

Chippendale said she was heartened to see so many people out protesting. 

After months of turmoil surrounding the animal shelter, Sitka has a new animal control officer. April Wheldon is a former veterinary technician and dog owner. She says she wants to rebuild trust with the Sitka community. KCAW’s Meredith Redick tagged along on Wheldon’s morning routine to learn more. 

I’m riding along with April Wheldon, Sitka’s new animal control officer, on the way to Sitka National Historical Park. We’re in a van that reads “Have a nice day, neuter and spay!” on the side in large turquoise letters. Wheldon has a radio clipped into her belt and a bag of dog treats in her pocket. 

“I’m always keeping my eyes open for any animals, you know, whether they’re stray, any loose animals, of course,” she says as we start down the gravel trail. “And then if I do come across anybody with dogs walking on leash, I always am going to go greet them and say hi to them, because I want them to like me.”

Wheldon has decades of experience working with animals. She worked at the San Diego Zoo, at a vet clinic in Juneau, and for the past few years, as a veterinary technician at Pet’s Choice clinic in Sitka. She says she’s had her eye on the animal control position for a while, and she decided to apply when the job opened up a few months ago.

“I just saw that need for the animal control position,” she says. “And the thing is, I have the animal experience, but I don’t really have the policing experience, which to me, I just wanted to do something new and different.”

In her first few weeks on the job, she learned how to file legal paperwork and approach complex situations like neglect and hoarding. 

“Unfortunately, there can be some bad situations with like, I know in the past, we had like, some big hoarding situations with like 60 cats, some pregnant, and kittens, and I know a lot of those animals were not in good health,” she says. 

Those cases can be especially taxing, but she says she tries to find the bright side.

“People bring in animals that have been neglected, but they’re bringing them in, so they’re making the right moves to get things done,” she says. “So it’s, you know, you just don’t want to be judgmental in that situation. You just want to be there to help as much as you can.”

Part of Wheldon’s job is writing citations – like for unlicensed animals or off-leash dogs in the national park  – but she says pulling out the notepad isn’t her first step.

“It’s, let’s see if we can solve the problem first,” she says. “Sometimes people just need help fixing their fence, you know, or something like that. Sometimes they don’t realize that they’re getting out in a certain way, or they’re jumping the fence, you know.”

Today, the park is quieter than usual — all we’ve seen is a handful of red squirrels clambering through the brush.

“Usually I pass somebody,” she says as we round the corner to return to the parking lot. “There’s like, not many dogs out today.”

So we head back to the shelter.

Wheldon started her job here at a turbulent moment in the shelter’s history. For years, the shelter has been supported by both the animal control officer, a position within the Sitka Police Department, and a group of volunteers. Last summer, the volunteer group, Friends of Sitka Animal Shelter, was locked out of the shelter by the previous animal control officer, who cited security concerns. A month later, the animal control officer briefly went missing while hiking on the Katlian Bay road. She was ultimately located safe but didn’t return to work. While the position was vacant, police euthanized six animals by gunshot. 

Wheldon says she knows many of the volunteers from her vet clinic work, and she hopes to rebuild trust – and volunteer presence – this spring. 

“Transparency and communication — I think communication is probably the biggest problem,” she says. “I know that that’s kind of what everybody is saying is like, you know, everybody just wants to know what’s going on. I’m an open book.”

A few volunteers are back in the shelter on a limited basis now, but Wheldon says it’s a priority to get all the volunteers back in the building. In the meantime, she says volunteers have been active in the community. The group started a “home-to-home” program to coordinate foster placements and adoption outside of the shelter. 

“The volunteer people are actually doing more work, keeping them out of the shelter and, like, doing home-to-home visits,” she says. “And that’s good for everybody, really.”

That program has been successful. Back at the shelter, Wheldon introduces me to the lone shelter resident today, a timid six-toed cat with fluffy orange fur. A volunteer, Maggie Woodlin, is crouched on the floor of the enclosure, peering into an open cat carrier. 

“Six Toes!” Woodlin coos gently. “You wanna come out? You wanna come out?”

The cat stares at her from the back of the carrier — today, he does not want to come out.

Wheldon says she likes to sit in the cat enclosure when she has time.

“When I’m not on calls and stuff, I kind of just sit in there, and that way I can do, you know, paperwork and stuff and be on my computer,” she says.

Sometimes, she plays music from playlists with names like “Cat Music Jukebox” and “Cat Bliss” — calming instrumentals to help the skittish six-toed cat relax.

As we leave the cat enclosure, Wheldon gestures to a newly-painted wall in the hallway. The city is painting and updating parts of the building, while there aren’t a lot of animals here. 

“I feel like we’re starting fresh,” she says. “We’re starting new. We’re gonna, you know, get things under control and and, you know, get everything back to the way it should be.”

In the meantime, she’ll be playing “Cat Bliss” for any felines who show up at the shelter. 

In a full-day koo.éex’ last weekend, participants shared song, dance, and memories of the history of the program. KCAW’s Meredith Redick stopped by and brings us this audio postcard: 

That was an audio postcard from the 50th anniversary of the Sitka Native Education Program. You heard the voices of Koodéik’ Joseph Marks, Vanessa Bradley, Robert Nielsen, and Herman Davis. You also heard the Sitka Strings Lingít violin and Kiks.ádi and Kaagwaantaan singers.

In an 11 to 9 vote Friday morning, the Senate passed a stripped-down version of House Bill 69, removing all policy items and leaving only the funding increase. Later that day, the House passed the amended bill 21-16. Three Senate majority members, including Sitka Republican Senator Bert Stedman, voted against the bill. Stedman said he supported increasing education funding, but he didn’t see how this funding could fit into a balanced budget. 

“We also have to have a balanced budget by the Constitution, and it’s very difficult when we’re already 200 million [dollars] underwater to fit this in and make it work,” he said during Friday’s floor session.

In an interview with KCAW on Monday, Sitka Independent Representative Rebecca Himschoot said funding Alaska’s public schools is also a constitutional obligation.

“The Constitution doesn’t say we should maintain our schools when we have the money to do it,” she said. “We are obligated to maintain our schools.”

Governor Mike Dunleavy called the bill a “joke” and said he will veto it. Himschoot, who sponsored the bill, said that’s not necessarily the end. 

“We have the opportunity to override,” she said. “We still have a month of session left. There’s a lot — there’s a lot we can still do.”

The amended version of House Bill 69 now goes to the governor. A veto override would require a two-thirds vote from the legislature. 

The Sitka Rose Awards take place April 25 at the Sheet’ka Kwaan Naa Kahidi. Doors open at 6 p.m. For questions, call SAFV at 907-747-3491 or email services@safv.org.