Crouched down in the engine room of the 50-foot vessel, Ben Matthys is showcasing the completed hybrid engine to Senator Lisa Murkowski, answering any follow-up questions she has. He’s the lead technician who joined the project four years ago. The project was funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy as part of a pilot program to make commercial engines cheaper and more environmentally friendly.

Sitka fisherman Jeff Turner owns the boat. After hearing about the grant, Turner was quick to volunteer his boat for the project. Yet on the two trips Turner took prior to Murkowski’s visit, a third-benefit was revealed, one that both Turner and Murkowski agree is “transformational”: 

“The noise pollution is something I really notice,” says Turner. “A quiet boat is fatigue free. I mean, you’re talking in a normal voice. You don’t have to yell across the deck.”

The team behind the hybrid engine plans to continue collecting data from the Mirage throughout the summer fishing season, logging the data in a publicly available document. That way, fishermen can decide whether they would like to install a hybrid engine as well. Another boat from Juneau is already lined up to be the second boat to have the hybrid engine installed. Turner says he’s excited to be a part of the development process to make the engine the best it can be for fishermen now and in the future. 

“I want to take advantage of the system. I want to see what it can do,” says Turner. “And I want the next person, and the next person, to learn from it. They’re collecting data on every single piece of equipment there, and what’s it gonna be in five years, ten years.”

Additionally, with concerns over outmigration and fewer young people staying in Alaska, the hybrid engine offers professional opportunities that could help retain and attract working-age people in the state. Chandler Kemp, the project’s enginee, believes that their partnership with locals in developing the engine is a promising example for future developers. 

“And so it’s not a case where we’ve hired a contractor to come in and build the project and then leave,” says Kemp. “Instead, we’ve invested locally to support people that want to do this type of work, and now have the expertise to do it more independently.”

But the promise for professional development is not without its obstacles, as highlighted by Linda Behnken, the executive director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association.

“There isn’t anybody in this country yet making these systems,” says Behnken. “There is a electric outboard maker that we want to use on a mariculture boat. But there isn’t anybody certifying marine certified batteries in this country yet, or building these systems.”

Batteries for electric vehicles are already proving a problem to transport. Alaska Marine Lines no longer ships electric vehicles to the state, and the ferry system highly restricts them. 

Murkowski says it needs to be addressed for the technology to move forward.

“The whole discussion about how you move an electric vehicle to Alaska, we can’t put them on these container ships anymore because of the danger of the fire,” says Murkowski. “So we’re going to have to figure this one out pretty darn quick.”

Murkowski strongly urges Alaskans to make their voices heard on the new Tongass plan that’s being created for the next 15 years. The public comment period ends on May 6th. Many environmentalists and organizations have critiqued the proposed land management plan. They say it gives minimal attention to commercial fishing and cultural subsistence practices, while placing heavy emphasis on logging and large-scale tourism development.

“You have an administration in play right now who is very, very aggressive, leaning into resource development, including on the timber harvest and management side,” says Murkowski. “We get that, but we also recognize that the Tongass is a multiple use forest. Always has been, always will be. And so we need to hear from not only those that are speaking on the cultural and the subsistence side, but on the tourism side, all the other activities that go on within the Tongass.”

Additionally, the planned relocation of the U.S. Forest Service’s national office to Salt Lake City has also raised environmental concerns and how it could potentially result in the relocation of an already minimized workforce in Alaska. Murkowski says that she anticipates Alaska to be “untouched” by the change. However, she says she is continuing to closely monitor the situation, as there are still some areas of uncertainty. They don’t know which positions would be relocated, and what that would mean for the science office in Juneau.

“I think it’s really important that we retain this office and the people so this effort to try to get more forest service folks out of Washington, DC, into the West [continues],” says Murkowski. “I think we’re asking the right questions. I think the jury is still out in terms of whether or not we’re getting the answers that we need in order to do the work.” 

Another regional hot topic is funding for the Alaska Marine Highway System. Murkowski helped steer over $700 million to Alaska’s ferry system through the bipartisan Infrastructure Act under the Biden administration. In her annual address to the state legislature, Murkowski said that she was “very disappointed” with the Alaska government’s management of the federal funding. While she says she is moving forward with various initiatives to secure more funding, Murkowski says nothing’s guaranteed. 

“I’m trying to be confident with all things…But it’s a $78 million hole. That’s substantial,” says Murkowski. “I want to make sure that what we have is a marine highway system that is standing on its own. That the state of Alaska has made a commitment towards… It is the Alaska Marine Highway System. It is not the Federal Marine Highway System.”

Additionally, the Trump administration’s attacks on DEI initiatives have drawn scrutiny over the qualifications for the Section 8(a) program, which impacts small businesses and Alaska Native Corporations. However, Murkowski says there is bipartisan support for the program, which she says has been hugely beneficial for Alaska. 

“The delegation has been very united on recognizing that when this program was created many decades ago, it was to not only provide economic empowerment, it was really designed to help fulfill one of the promises under [the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act] in terms of self determination,” says Murkowski. “And so I think part of this is just a failure to fully understand what that means and why it was established in the first place.”

Outmigration is an increasing concern in Southeast Alaska, with roughly 24% of all Alaskan workers living outside the state. Murkowski says that retaining Alaskan residents is of the upmost importance to her as a senator and a mother, with one of her sons living outside of Alaska due to the perceived lack of opportunity. However, Murkowski says she is highly optimistic about the growing unique professional opportunities and lifestyle benefits that Alaska has to offer. 

“There is a lot of cool stuff that is going on that should be exciting for young people, but excitement doesn’t pay your mortgage. Excitement doesn’t get you into a house or help you afford the cost of groceries,” says Murkowski. “But we have a bonus here in this area, and that is not only a natural beauty of our surroundings, but a generosity of heart with people that make it really special, even during some tough times.”

The Senate is currently in recess until April 16th.

Dave Turcott is a commercial fisherman who has been trolling in southeast Alaska since the 1960s. Yet it was only two years ago that Turcott began transcribing his experiences from the sea onto paper, earning him the title of a “fisherpoet.” Standing behind a podium at the Sitka Public Library with the ocean at his back, Turcott reads to a room of over 30 attentive librarians an anecdote chronicling one of his earliest memories in Southeast, which involves him and his fellow fishermen improvising a solution to fixing a hole in their gas tank while on the road to catch a ferry in Haines. 

“Somebody freshened the chewing gum. We added a little gas, and eased on to the next roadhouse. Someone was always chewing a fresh plug in case the old one fell off,” says Turcott, much to the amusement of the crowd.

And Turcott is not the only fisherpoet sharing his work. Mariah Warren has worked as a fisherman across a wide variety of vessels for 20 years, half of them as a captain. One of the short readings she shared with the audience was a poem titled “Please Don’t Die at Sea.”

“Please don’t die at sea, my dears. Tell the story someday instead over burgers and beers, about the time the storm called your name and you chickened out. The kids are listening. Those are the times that they need to hear about,” says Warren. “Remember your heroes, those storm gray, bright-eyed women and Poseidon-bearded men. I know we all do. Please survive so someday you can be a grouchy, salt encrusted, wise and inspiring old timer too.”

Sitting in chairs propped up beside the podium, Turcott leans back into his chair with tear-filled eyes and pursed lips. Next to him, Paul Rioux says for a long time, he struggled to understand how his routine life at sea would interest readers. He shares an essay where he realizes the life of a fisherman offers a unique literary connection between self-reliance and fate.

“Rare days of pure winning are made sweeter by all the days of struggling, fighting weather, and during poor fishing and/or depressing crisis. All of this occurs in an awe-inspiring setting seen by an infinitesimally small percentage of the population, thereby a very exclusive club,” says Rioux. “You cannot fake your way in. You have to get salty to be salty.”

One of the visiting librarians in the audience is Sandy Lukes, the Outreach Librarian for the Anchorage Public Library. It’s Lukes’ first ever Alaska Library Association conference, and she says listening to the storytellers gave her a greater appreciation for how crucial fishing is for communities like Sitka. 

“Me being from Seattle, I know there’s a lot of fishing that goes around there, but I wasn’t as close to or familiar with it,” says Lukes. “So it’s really interesting seeing how how much that is part of the livelihood here, and what that looks like for people.”

Tele Aadsen is the 4th and final fisherpoet and moderator for the event. She shares a humorous and heart-warming story of a fisherman who inspired her to embrace her queerness in their line of work. She hopes the librarians are inspired to highlight the unexpected storytellers in their own communities, fishermen or otherwise.

“Sharing with librarians is awesome. Who better to share with than people who are professional story shares you know and appreciate that thought that goes into it,” says Aadsen. “I think the takeaway is, who are the people in your community who maybe people don’t know their writing, or have their own stories to bring forward, because we all have those folks everywhere.” 

As the event draws to a close, the fisherpoets and librarians mingle, with some snacking on the fish treats caught and prepared by the fishermen themselves. With shelves chock-full of books on one end, and a large glass window framing Sitka Sound on the other, the patrons are surrounded by stories.

It is the week before spring break at Pacific High School in Sitka, and a handful of students are scattered across different tables in a classroom, hunkered down in their final projects. While students often find themselves polishing up their final essays or posters, these teens are working on a different assignment: original comic books.

Sophomore Sydney Lindstrom is making her way through a stack of completed comic spreads.

“I’m working on folding my comic because it’s in a zine format,” she says. She layers the printed pages on top of a tablet illuminating pure light to help her straighten out her lines while she folds each paper into a pocket-sized magazine. Her comic summarizes creation stories from various cultures and compares and contrasts them to Western scientific theories she learned about in her physical science class.

Until now, Lindstrom only dabbled in illustration, usually characters from her favorite tv shows. But branching out to a whole comic in a new style was a fun challenge.

“It’s like a style that I don’t really ever draw in. It’s not my style really at all. But it was interesting to try out the new style,” says Lindstrom.

It is this very exploration of ideas and stepping out of one’s comfort zone that English teacher Tristan Guevin hopes to instill in his students during the course. 

“Oftentimes, graphic novels and comics aren’t necessarily seen as literature, but if you read them, you analyze them in the same way you would analyze a novel or, you know, a non fiction book. There’s so much richness there,” says Guevin. “Just a great medium for students to explore ideas, to learn about other people, other cultures, times, events, and so I think they’re just really, really accessible and just enjoyable.”

While this is Guevin’s second year teaching the comics course, it is the first time a guest artist helped lead the class, thanks to an Artist in Schools grant from the Sitka Fine Arts Camp, Sitka Public School District, and Alaska State Council of the Arts. The artist in question is Medar de la Cruz, a Pulitzer Prize winning illustrator and comic artist who taught art in Sitka before through the Fine Arts Camp. Chatting over Zoom from his home in Brooklyn, de la Cruz fondly recalls the first day at Pacific High, when he revealed the wide variety of art supplies he gifted to the school, including Lindstrom’s light-up tablet. 

“It was really cool to just watch everybody sort of flock through the materials and start using them. It’s a really exciting thing, and it reminds me of my first time,” says de la Cruz. “Every time I come home from the art store… It’s almost like Christmas, and you just really can’t wait to to play with the tool and see what it does.”

As he got to know the students throughout the residency, de la Cruz grew increasingly impressed with how knowledgeable they were about nature and global politics, with the students studying the autobiographical graphic novel Persepolis, which recounts author Marjane Satrapi’s life in pre-and post-revolutionary Iran. 

“I don’t know if the average kid would would have these sort of insights on the book. And I really appreciated that,” says de la Cruz. “I noticed that they are very well connected to current events, probably because of Tristan’s guidance, who chose a book, for example, in this situation, about Iran during a war in Iran, or during conflict in Iran.”

Still, de la Cruz said it took a bit of work to bring students out of their shells. He recalls leading them in an activity where they passed illustrations around the room at random, and each artist added something new such as dialogue or another panel. It’s typically a quiet exercise, but making it more conversational allowed students to open up. 

“And there was a much more organic approach in this sense. And there was a lot also a lot more laughing and a lot more fun being had than any other time that I’ve ever done this workshop,” says de la Cruz. “So it really gave me an opportunity to reconsider how I go about this in the future.”

Today, those comics are proudly displayed on the glass walls of the classroom, with different drawing materials and art styles coming together to tell a wide variety of chaotically imaginative adventures, like the origin story of a swan and goose hybrid known as the “swoose”, which became a running classroom gag. 

Guevin says the collaborative comic writing encapsulated the spirit of de la Cruz’s residency. 

“It was such a great experience. For me, and a collaborative one where students were able to be creative and express themselves through both art and narrative,” says Guevin. “And so I think that’s something that I take from this class, and I hope to build on, is just that kind of spirit of collaboration and creativity.” 

Guevin and de la Cruz are planning a second iteration of his residency for the course next year. More than anything, de la Cruz hopes the course will help students gain greater comic and graphic novel literacy. 

“Regardless of if they actually walk away with a desire to make comics, I really want them to walk away with a desire to read them more. And I think that’s the biggest distinction between the two right there,” says de la Cruz.

As Lindstrom folds the last of her comics, she says de la Cruz inspired her to elevate her artistry. 

“He was really good at free-handing his comics, which was surprising, but I want to try and do that more,” says Lindstrom. “I’m more interested in just getting into comics, because this was my first time making like a legit comic, and it was really enjoyable, and I want to try it again.”

Lindstrom has already given some of her comics to her teachers, but soon plans to distribute her latest completed ones to her family. She says she’ll keep at least one for herself too, and in the future, who knows how many more stories will stand beside it.

A helicopter crew from Air Station Sitka medevaced a Tenakee Springs man on Monday after he sustained serious injuries falling off a ladder.

In an interview with KCAW, Air Station Sitka representative Herald Pereira said that the man was found in his cabin on Monday (3-16-26) after he fell off of a six foot ladder. Alaska State Troopers responded to the call. Pereira said the troopers reported the man was “dazed and confused” and it was unclear what had caused the fall. Troopers called for Coast Guard assistance around 1 p.m.  

After assessing weather conditions and gathering other necessary information, Air Station Sitka sent out a four-person helicopter crew to retrieve the man about an hour later.

In a follow-up interview with KCAW, Air Station Sitka Assistant Public Affairs Officer Chantz Black said that the man was discovered by a concerned neighbor, who guessed that he had been lying injured on the ground for roughly a day and a half. Black said that the helicopter crew arrived back at Sitka around 4:30pm Monday, and transferred the man to Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center for further treatment. 

WEB ONLY: Editor’s Note: This story was updated on 3-20-26 to include new information about the rescue, and clarify that a neighbor initially found the individual, rather than a trooper, according to more recent Coast Guard accounts.

Last week (3-12-26), the Commission passed two resolutions proposed by Commissioner William Craig of Sitka, who is a long-time disability rights advocate and is legally blind.

While Commissioner Craig was not present at the meeting for medical reasons, his fellow commissioners represented the resolutions on his behalf. Vice Chairperson Jessie Russridge made a case for Craig’s resolution urging the legislature to update the Alaska Reads Act to require braille education for blind and visually impaired students.

“This has been something that Commissioner Craig is passionate about and has done a lot of work and research [on] and has been affected by this and it’s been brought up before the commission,” said Russridge. “We’ve had good conversation on it, so I’m excited to move it forward.”

Commissioner Craig’s second resolution calls for the state’s Division of Elections to address voting accessibility shortcomings discovered in a federal inquiry. In 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice found that Alaska violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by failing to provide accessible polling places and elections websites. The commission’s executive director, Robert Corbisier, cited personal examples from Commissioner Craig that highlight the need for the updates. 

“I have learned a lot, obviously, from Commissioner Craig and his time on the Commission. [Blind people] use screen readers, but that doesn’t mean that a website is necessarily set up for the screen reader,” said Corbisier. “For example…You can add a hidden HTML tag for that picture that describes what the picture is. But if you don’t do that, it’s not going to be in the code, and the screen reader isn’t going to be able to pick that up and explain to the visually impaired person, ‘Hey, this is what this picture has on it.'” 

Ultimately, Corbisier said that the resolution was proposed by Commissioner Craig to address the larger issue of accessibility at the polls, rather than merely making websites accessible.

“His concern is making sure that if there is a methodology that is available to any Alaskan, that is available to any blind or visually impaired Alaskan at an equal an equal rate, at an equal polling location, at every location, and that every location be accessible every methodology be in compliance with the American Disabilities Act,” said Corbisier.

The commission approved both resolutions unanimously.

Editor’s Note (4-1-26): The story was updated to correct how Corbisier never referred to any of Commissioner Craig’s family members during the meeting

“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

The Sitka Legacy Foundation is offering a new, one-time grant for projects contributing to food security in Sitka and Port Alexander. 

Jennifer Mac Donald is the Program Manager for the local nonprofit, which is working with the Alaska Community Foundation’s Nourished Communities program to put forth $15,000 in total funding. 

While the group  is particularly keen for proposals that expand access to affordable food in Sitka, she says that the grant could fund a wide variety of projects. 

“Some examples might be increasing local food production, distributing food to households in need. Could be harvest or distribution of wild and traditional foods…It could also be teaching or sharing food skills like gardening or preservation,” said Mac Donald. “But overall, the goal is to support projects that increase access to healthy local food.”

She says that a wide variety of organizations, from non-profits to tribal entities and public schools, are eligible to apply.

The grant’s application form is open until April 3rd, and Mac Donald says the  foundation plans to distribute the funds within the month. Anyone whose project is not selected or misses the deadline could apply again to the foundation’s annual grant cycle in August.

Dr. Mary Schoenfeldt is no stranger to disaster stress and mental health management. Throughout her career in emergency management, Schoenfeldt led the post-disaster response to school shootings such as Columbine and Sandy Hook, as well as for the Oso mudslide, the deadliest mudslide in U.S history. As a self-described “repurposed” emergency manager, Schoenfeldt shared her expertise navigating disaster reactions at this year’s Southeast Alaska Landslide Information and Preparedness Partnership, or SLIPP, conference in Sitka.  

“We’re talking about traumatic loss. And trauma and grief are two different things,” said Schoenfeldt. “We can’t get to the grief of loss until we deal with how that loss happened, and that’s the trauma piece.”

Schoenfeldt says that research shows how there are predictable behavioral, physical, and psychological reactions that people experience following a crisis: from coming together in unity after a traumatic event, to navigating their sense of control being shattered and living with “trigger events.” Sometimes, victims experience changes in sleeping and eating habits, and may even avoid the traumatic event’s location in order to avoid being triggered. In the short time she’d been in Sitka so far, Schoenfeldt observed how Sitkans fell into these patterns following the devastating landslides over a decade ago, which killed three people.

“Talking about landslides, there’s always going to be a scar. And somebody pointed one out to me here in Sitka about that the other day. ‘Oh, look, there up on the hill. That’s a landslide scar,’” said Schoenfeldt. “There’s always going to be scars. Some of them are on people, some of them are visible, and some of them are not. We don’t see those emotional scars, but they are there. And then when it starts to rain again, that becomes a trigger event.”

In order to move through trauma in the wake of disaster, Schoenfeldt advises that victims should not suppress or ignore their stress, as moderate stress is good for people, but rather to acknowledge and learn how to manage it. 

She said, typically, communities that are tightly connected before disasters, often small towns and neighborhoods, are able to demonstrate greater resiliency in the recovery period. While individuals have different reactions and needs in the wake of trauma, communities are only as healthy as the people in them, so disaster response must include community engagement, from chatting with a neighbor about your feelings, to larger community gatherings. 

“If I ever write another book, the title will be ‘The Power of Potluck,’” said Schoenfeldt, much to the amusement of the over 30 people in attendance. “Because I think everybody brings something into that community gathering. It’s pretty important.”

Through doing so, Schoenfeldt says that communities can experience “post-traumatic growth,” in which individuals and communities emerge from disasters with gained strengths as well as developed resiliency networks. And Schoenfeldt says this growth does not have to be limited within communities,  pointing to the work SLIPP has done toward developing a mutual aid coalition across the region that can offer support in the wake of disasters. 

Schoenfeldt was a guest speaker at a two-day conference hosted by SLIPP in Sitka in early March. The event aimed to connect experts and community leaders across Southeast to exchange knowledge on the latest information and strategies addressing landslide risk and response. 

Last week, [2-23-26], a team of specialists from the Alaska Volcano Observatory stopped by Sitka to do some station maintenance work on Mt. Edgecumbe, a volcano on nearby Kruzof Island.

Ellie Boyce is a field engineer with the AVO. She and a coworker were joined by four technical team members from the U.S. Geological Survey in Anchorage to repair two of four stations surrounding the historically active volcano.

“We had a failed component in the GPS system, so we needed to go out and replace the antenna that received the signals from the satellites, and that’s a pretty straightforward fix,” says Boyce. “It only took us one day.”

The GPS system in question involves four metal tripods stationed around Mt. Edgecumbe since 2023. The system provides data in real time about tectonic shifts happening at the volcano, rather than waiting for a satellite to pass overhead, which happens only once every 12 days and produces less accurate results when it’s snowing. 

“And so we’re really interested in whether two stations on opposite sides of the volcano may be moving toward each other and down, which would suggest deflation of a magma body, or if they’re possibly moving away from each other and up, that would suggest there could be inflation of a magma chamber,” says Boyce.

Boyce says deflation generally suggests that a volcano is less likely to erupt in the near future, whereas inflation refers to a recharge of a magma reservoir that could feed a future eruption.

While there are no written observations of it erupting, Tlingit oral history describes small eruptions around 800 years ago, and geologic evidence points to a major eruption around 13,000 years ago. The status of the 3,202-foot volcano located 16 miles from Sitka was changed from “dormant” to “historically active” in 2022 following a swarm of small earthquakes. 

Since then, Boyce says the AVO has installed local seismometers alongside the antennas, which are able to provide more accurate information.

“So we have local seismometers that we can use to more precisely locate where earthquakes are happening at what depth, and if they’re sort of centering on a location under the volcano versus perhaps out towards a fault or something that may be more tectonic in origin,” says Boyce.

Ronni Grapenthin is a professor who works at the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He says that since mid-2024, the AVO has been observing deflation of Mt. Edgecumbe, and labeled it a color code GREEN, meaning it’s in a “typical background, noneruptive state,” since the GPS-system was first installed. 

Two antennas at the site began to fail back in December. Boyce says it wasn’t until February that the AVO team found a good weather window to swing by and fix them. She says her team is planning more field work this summer to keep the equipment monitoring smoothly.