Although wild salmon remains one of Alaska’s most lucrative seafood industries, it’s also one of the state’s most vulnerable, as climate change and population growth increase pressure on the world’s oceans. As it looks more and more likely that demand will eventually outstrip the productivity of salmon and other wild seafood stocks, researchers have turned to another method for producing protein from fish – by culturing it in a lab.

KCAW’s Tash Kimmell recently traveled to California to taste some of the world’s first lab-produced salmon, and sent this report. 

It’s a typical overcast morning in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood when I arrive at the headquarters of the biotech company Wildtype. In a city known for tech, Wildtype isn’t an anomaly, but in the world of sustainable seafood they’re making waves. 

KCAW – Hey, how are you doing? 

Dalton Thomas – Nice to meet you. I’m Dalton. 

KCAW – Nice to meet you.

Inside the Wildtype offices, a group of young scientists mills around in sneakers, and graphic-t’s obscured by white lab coats. Dalton Thomas, the company’s head of food service sales, seats me at a kitchen bar. Behind it, an in-house sushi chef prepares me a plate of their product before it hits the US market –  lab grown salmon.  

It’s a square block of marbled pink flesh, almost indistinguishable from traditional salmon – except this fish has never touched the ocean. 

Thomas – So we have the nigiri version of the wild type salmon. It’s already brushed  with soy sauce, so it’s just ready to eat. Here are some mustard, miso, and chives. And then this is more like a typical salmon avocado roll. 

Wildtype’s fish is intended to be enjoyed raw, a decision made in part because of the sheer size and profitability of the sushi industry. However, as Thomas explains, “cell cultured” salmon is simply not as appetizing when cooked. 

KCAW – It does have a sea flavor. But it’s like not as soft.

Thomas – It’s not fishy.

KCAW – It’s really smooth, that’s how I’d describe it. 

Thomas – Kind of homogenous.

KCAW – It does taste like fish, which is weird.

Thomas – It’s not weird, because it’s fish!

While lab-grown salmon may seem futuristic, the technology and the product are already here on my plate. But is it really fish? 

“The basic idea is we cultivate real salmon cells,” said Justin Kolbeck, co-founder and CEO of Wildtype. “And we combine those with a plant based scaffold or sort of a three dimensional matrix to help create a really nice appearance and taste and texture.”

He goes on.

“The super cool thing is we’ve actually been able to replicate fat and this sort of connective tissue – that white stuff and you’re biting into a piece of raw salmon that kind of gets stuck between your teeth and then the fatty parts – without having to use  any genetic engineering.”

To make this product, technicians harvest stem cells from wild salmon. Then, in the same way a baker might feed a sourdough starter, they feed the cells with different proteins, amino acids, salts and sugars. The “scaffold” as Kolbeck calls it, works like a 3D lattice, made of different plant cells. The fish cells mesh with the scaffold, which  then directs the cells to grow into fat or tissue, giving the salmon its texture and shape. But Wildtype’s creators say their mission goes beyond the novelty of growing meat in a lab. 

Kolbeck says the company’s aim is only to supplement the existing seafood industry – not supplant it. The company has even gone so far as to invest in conservation efforts around one of the world’s biggest sockeye salmon fisheries in Bristol Bay, Alaska.  

“If you look at the long run trends, returning stocks of Pacific salmon in general along the Pacific coast have been declining pretty substantially over the last 40-50 years,” Kolbeck said. “The FAO (Food and Agriculture Association) predicts we’re going to need something like 30 million more tons of seafood to satisfy demand by the end of this decade. I found myself asking – and I know a lot of others have asked – where’s all that fish gonna come from?”

“I don’t think it is a solution as much as a diversion,” said Eric Jordan, a multigenerational commercial fisherman. For most of his lifes he’s made a living trolling for wild salmon in the waters of Southeast Alaska. He says he doesn’t believe  lab-grown salmon poses a threat to his livelihood, but does have  other concerns. 

“I catch these creatures that are the most wonderful food on Earth,” said Jordan. “I can’t imagine this lab-produced flash is going to taste anything like wild Alaska Salmon. So I’m not threatened by that. I am concerned about the existential climate change threat, and trawl bycatch.”

Alaska is  one of the biggest producers of wild caught salmon in the world. But in recent years, the state has struggled with the environmental stressors of a warming planet. Salmon runs virtually disappeared from of Western Alaska’s largest river systems in the last couple of years. And now the famous Bering Sea crab harvest has crashed, too. Even so, Jordan feels a seafood alternative might be taking resources away from conservation efforts. 

“There’s a lot of places you can invest money to protect wild salmon without investing in producing an alternative to eat,” said Jordan.

_______________________________________________

Salmon are more than food; they are sacred

Eric Jordan’s antipathy toward lab-cultured salmon is not just about its potential role in human food consumption. Jordan notes it’s also about an animal which has sustained Alaskans for millennia, and is sacred to many. 

“Salmon are sacred,” says Jordan “And part of that is respecting them. And part of that is why we outlawed finfish farming in the state of Alaska is because it doesn’t respect these creatures, which are meant to swim the wild ocean and not to be caged in pens. You’re mistreating a creature that’s destined to swim the wild oceans and find its way back home after traveling 1,000s of miles. We need to respect the sacred creatures who offer themselves for us to eat.”

__________________________________________

But momentum is growing for cell-cultured foods. David Kaplan, a professor of Biomedical Engineering at Tufts, says Wildtype is far from alone.

“In the US, there is an incredible number and growing number of companies out there trying to grow just about any food you might want to eat or have eaten,” said Kaplan. “There’s a company now trying to emulate that.” 

Kaplan runs the university’s lab studies in tissue engineering. In his view, the work has become essential. 

“There is absolutely no way we can meet the protein needs and the meat needs that are growing around the world,” he said. “Consumers want meat, they like meat, and that’s not going to go away.” 

 ________________________________

Lab-cultured foods and conservation

Justin Kolbeck’s dream of cell-cultured salmon one day being as cheap and accessible as a big mac may sound like a fisherman’s nightmare. But Prof. David Kaplan echoes the sentiment that lab meats are only meant to be a piece of the puzzle in conserving wild populations. 

“I think, generally, though, the idea is that this will be a way to help preserve natural cultivars, like of salmon, or tuna, or, you know, clams and mussels, and shrimp, because you’ll have an alternative way to make these things,” Kaplan said. “So it will be less impactful on existing natural sources, which I think is a good thing long term.”

______________________________________

The  Food & Drug Administration has yet to approve any cell-cultured meat for consumption in the US, however approval is expected within the next year. And Wildtype’s Kolbeck is banking on the future, hoping to one day transition his cell-cultured salmon from a niche market, to something more universal.

“We haven’t scaled this up to the point where we can make this product super cheaply yet,” said Kolbeck. “It would be amazing if we could make one of nature’s healthiest foods so accessible that it would be as cheap and available as a Big Mac. That is the thing that gets me out of bed in the morning.”

While we may not be seeing the golden arches carrying a lab grown McFish anytime soon, there’s no doubt that the landscape of the seafood industry is changing, and cell-cultured salmon will be making its way to the market sooner than later.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to correct a misspelling of Wildtype CEO Justin Kolbeck’s last name.

It’s a cool summer morning on Etolin Street and like most days, I’ve come to milk two of Sitka’s resident goats: Sunny and Tonya.

Goats are rare in Southeast Alaska, as well as statewide. In fact, there’s only one USDA certified goat dairy in the entire state. But this milk isn’t going to be made into cheese or put on cereal. Soon it will be a bar of soap. 

“I don’t have any soaps that don’t use goat milk,” says Evening Star Grutter.

Grutter is the founder of Evening Star Soaps and Salves. The Sitka-based business sells an array of handcrafted goods, but Eve Grutter’s artisanal goat milk soap is the real star of the show. It’s been suggested that goat milk’s beneficial properties are due to its high vitamin A and lactic acid  content, along with being antimicrobial.

“Goat milk adds lather and some soothing properties for the skin,” explains Grutter. 

You wouldn’t know it now, but it was only a year ago that Grutter sold her first bar of soap. Like many businesses created in the height of the pandemic, Evening Star Soaps and Salves was born out of necessity. Having left commercial fishing, and as a newly-single mom, Grutter needed a new plan. 

“Maybe Covid is part of why it happened because I couldn’t go out and get a different job,” she muses. “Childcare is really difficult too. And I really, really needed something that I could do, and be a stay-at-home mom.”

The idea came to her after a friend offered to give her free life coaching sessions. 

“We brainstormed a bunch of different things I could do for income. I went and chose to learn about soap and to go into making soap because everybody washes,” she laughs. “And it was rather humble start with that thought, and now it’s turned into a luxury soap.”

When I meet Grutter, she’s in her basement which doubles as a soap laboratory, making a fresh batch of dandelion, lemon, and clove soap.

“Part of my basement is now child play area. And the rest of its rapidly being taken over by soap making, soap curing, and soap packaging,” Grutter said. “Soap soap soap everywhere. It’s turned into a micro soap factory.”

The soap making process is long, and at times, scientific. 

“It’s chemistry. You’ve got your base and your acid, and you add the base to the acid. And the result makes the crystal which is soap,” explains Grutter. “Soap is a crystalline structure, and the goat milk and water are necessary to dissolve the base so that it can react with the oil.”

Grutter measures out coconut oil and mango butter with precision, adding to the perfume of essential oils already permeating the room. Once all the elements are melted and mixed, she pours the sweet smelling concoction into a mold to set for six weeks. Grutter sells her soaps locally and online. Her bars are  on bathroom sinks and kitchen counters as far away as Japan. But while Grutter’s soap has evolved to include an array of specialty butters and oils,  many of her first products were inspired by the medicinal plants of Alaska. 

“I harvested some Devil’s club and infused some oils and made some soap. And it smelled like Devil’s club and I was really happy with that,” Grutter recalls. “And then the neighbors cut down a spruce tree. And I thought, you know that spruce smells really nice. I’m gonna go try some spruce needles. Spruce is like a northern worldwide medicinal plant.”

For now, Grutter’s hopes are humble. While she’s returning to occasional commercial fishing, Grutter comes clean, and admits that she has gone too far into soap to ever want to slip back.

To the untrained eye, the overgrown vacant lot on Katlian Street may seem like just that. But to the Kiks.ádi Clan, it’s a significant cultural site. This plot of land is where the Kiks.ádi clan house, known as the Point House, once stood. Last month, after over 20 years outside of Kiks.ádi possession, it was repatriated to its home clan.

Jerrick Hope-Lang, a Juneau-based member of the Kiks.ádi clan now holds the deed. As he explains it, the Point House was passed down in the western tradition via a will, and subsequently torn down. Although no longer physically standing, Hope-Lang says the Point House still holds immense cultural significance.  

“Conceptually, we all know that we refer to our people as from the Point House, so the physical structure may not exist. But we as a people do. So the concept of the house being gone. That’s just a physical structure,” Hope-Lang said.

In Tlingit tradition, property and clan affiliation are passed through the matrilineal line, unlike in western culture where property is passed from both parents. Because marriage usually takes place between different clan members, to keep property within the rightful clan, it can’t be passed down through the nuclear family. But in the case of the Point House, that’s exactly what happened. Caught in the clash between Tlingit tradition, and western property law, it was passed down patrilineally, falling out of Kiks.ádi possession. But this isn’t an isolated event. Last year, another clan house collapsed after years in bureaucratic limbo without a caretaker, spurring Hope-Lang to act. 

“The Coho House fell down. And I just felt like…it was like a ‘now or never’ thing for me,” Hope-Lang explained

Over the course of a decade, Hope-Lang developed a close friendship with one of the last two living heirs of Point House, who declined to be interviewed for this story. They’d discussed an exchange before, but never followed through. In July, Hope-Lang decided to ask again.

“She had agreed at some point that she wanted to disburse her half of the property to me. I was excited but also nervous,” he said.

Hope-Lang invited her to Sitka, to meet with an attorney and see what the process of signing over the deed might look like. From Juneau, they traveled to Sitka, where the other remaining heir was located. Hope-Lang says he wasn’t planning on signing anything that day, but as fate would have it, both remaining heirs agreed to sign the deed. By the end of the day, he was the new legal owner of the property. 

“I was just kind of in shock, because I just thought we were having a conversation,” Hope-Lang said.

Now, he plans to have the house rebuilt as a “mixed use” gathering space. He hopes the revitalization of his clan house will spark a broader conversation around repatriation. 

“Our clan house revitalization could be more than this project. I think it starts here, with this ‘land back’ concept, and how we identify that as individual clans, beyond our tribes and how we move forward in that and act in that,” said Hope-Lang. “I’m excited that future Kiks.ádi children can walk into a place and say, this is my clan house.”

According to the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training, there there were once 43 standing clan houses in Sitka’s Indian Village District. Now only nine remain.

James Poulson is a member of the Sitka Historic Preservation Commission. He said the proposed rebuilding of the Point House would not only be a cultural milestone but a historical one. 

“They’ve been kind of coming down and slowly disappearing. And kind of been replaced with empty lots that get used for storing fishing gear and other industrial gear,” he explained. “This would be the first 21st century clan house built in Sitka.”

One of the few remaining clan houses is the Porch House. Chuck Miller is its caretaker. I met up with him at his ancestral home to learn more about the cultural significance of clan houses in Sitka.

“We’re in Kayaash ka hít. In Tlingit, It’s translated as either the Platform House or the Porch House,” he explained. “Our family refers to it as the Mother Coho House because it was the very first Coho clan house built when the Coho people first came about. So all the other Coho houses come from this house.”

Miller’s clan house is one of the only functioning clan houses left in Sitka, and therefore acts as a cultural hub for other Coho Clan members. 

“We have meetings here. And we have people lie in state here when they pass away underneath our family screen to show them honor and respect and our regalia is still here in our clan house. So that’s kind of what clan houses are all about,” Miller said.

Unlike the Point House, the Porch House was passed down to Miller according to tradition, from his maternal uncle. As he explains it, Tlingit tradition recognizes property as being collectively owned. So when western law arrived in Sitka, entire families of 10-15 people would sign the deed. According to Miller, it wasn’t a piece of paper, but an unwritten agreement that’s kept his house within the rightful clan. 

“It was just an unwritten thing that says, ‘If I pass, it’ll go to my spouse, my spouse will turn it over to the rightful clan.'” Miller said. “That way, you don’t have to go through 15 people’s signatures to get that permission…So we’ve done it that way since I’ve been here, since my uncle was here, since his uncle was here. So we’ve figured out a way around it somehow.”

After 25 years as caretaker, Miller says the Porch house is more than a building. It’s a point of pride. 

“I mean, growing up for me here, I lived down the street, literally. And I remember coming into this clan house when I was a very small, young child, and having all my family here — family functions, meetings, food, et cetera.” recalled Miller. “Having a clan house rebuilt here would be something pretty huge I think, and I applaud the Kiks.ádis for wanting to get this done and taken care of.”

Hope-Lang wants to see the exact same thing for Point House – for the clan house —to be rebuilt now or at least in the lifetime of those generous enough to return it. 

Editor’s Note; Hope-Lang urged KCAW to respect the privacy of the two former owners of Point House. KCAW obtained the deed to independently verify the donors, but agreed not to interview them for this story. 

It’s low tide, on a clear, blue sky morning as Ellie Schmidt leads a group of visiting cruise ship passengers to the waterline for a snorkel tour. But the group isn’t in the tropics, and they’re not in the usual beach day attire. Instead, they’re wearing thick wetsuits, on the rocky shores of Sitka, Alaska’s Magic Island. 

Strands of bull kelp bob on the water’s surface. Below, a thriving kelp forest home to vibrant sea stars, urchins, and jellyfish awaits. Back at the shop, when I ask the snorkelers how they chose this somewhat unusual attraction, one of them says, “Who can say they’ve snorkeled in Alaska?”

Another remarks he’d never even heard of snorkeling in Alaska until this trip.

Even on a summer day like today, water temperatures wont go above 55 degrees. But Schmidt- founder of Selkie Snorkels in Sitka- says it’s part of what makes snorkeling in Alaska special. 

“I think there’s sort of this post-snorkel high that you get when you get out of the water, the cold water” she said. “There’s this hyper-rich, nutritious water that creates incredible abundance of biodiversity and animals that’s really striking and unique compared to, even like, tropical places.”

Selkie Snorkels opened this June, only two short months after Schmidt conceived of the business. While snorkeling may not be a quintessential Alaska pastime, Schmidt hopes Selkie Snorkels can be an eco-friendly attraction for summer visitors. 

 “I think from a standpoint of a tourism industry that’s focused a lot around fishing — which of course is wonderful — it’s kind of cool to have tourism that’s just focused on looking and maybe taking photos,” she said.

The idea of ‘eco’ or ‘sustainable’ tourism is not a new one, but in rural destinations like Sitka, it remains especially relevant. According to Cornell professor and sustainable tourism expert Megan Epler Wood, sustainability looks different in every community, but the framework is always the same. 

“The idea would be that tourism doesn’t damage the environment…where visitors visit, and that it doesn’t hurt the chances of local people to prosper,” explains Epler Wood.

As tourism returns to Sitka in record breaking numbers this summer, the city has been embroiled in conversations about how best to handle the strain on local resources. It’s unclear what the future of tourism in the Southeast will look like, but according to Wood, businesses like Selkie can play a part in protecting vulnerable ecosystems. 

“We have a lot of good research and ecotourism because it’s been around the longest, where you see that it really has contributed to the conservation of natural areas, it absolutely does provide revenue, and a reason for people to conserve the natural environment,” said Epler Wood.

Fred Drake runs a snorkeling operation in Ketchikan, perhaps the first in Southeast.  His company Snorkel Alaska has been up and running for nearly 20 years. Like Schmidt, he fell in love with the intricate ecosystems beneath Southeast’s frigid waves. 

“There’s more marine life in our intertidal zone than there are most places in the world. And people don’t realize that you look at the surface of the water, it looks black, it looks cold, hard. As soon as you put your face in the water, there’s all this color,” Drake said enthusiastically.

While he’s never labeled himself a sustainable tourism company, his goal has always been to share and educate people about the beauty of Alaska’s ocean life.

“These creatures are harvested by commercial divers like extreme here in Southeast Alaska — cucumbers, sea urchin, giant geoduck clams. I mean, they take so much of it out of the water and ship it all over Asia and Japan for profit,” he said. “We’re educating people about them, letting them handle them, take photos with them, and then we’re putting them back.”

 Like Selkie, Drake’s customers are majority cruise ship passengers, but he said his business still holds value for the locals

“I can’t tell you how many locals have come back and thanked me for introducing them into the underwater world here,” said Drake.

Schmidt hopes in the coming summers, her business too can benefit the community, by making snorkeling more accessible to locals and tourists alike. 

“It’d be great if we could do sort of like educational tours in the future. Or have sort of a more co-op style where we’re sharing gear, and making the ocean a little bit more accessible,” said Schmidt.

Schmidt said she plans on returning for next summer’s tourist season. And while its unclear exactly what Selkie will look like in the future, it’s clear snorkeling in Sitka is here to stay. 

A coast guard crew from Airstation Sitka medevaced a 65-year-old woman from a cruise ship in Cross Sound on Sunday night.   (8-21-22). 

Around 5 p.m., the command center in Juneau received word from the cruise ship Zuiderdam that a woman on the vessel was in need of medical attention. 

According to aircraft commander Lieutenant Erik Oredson, the woman had lost vision in one of her eyes due to an advanced eye infection, and needed to see a specialist within hours.  

Oredson said his aircrew met the boat some 30 miles off Chichagof island, but low visibility thwarted rescue efforts. 

“The fog lifted in the sound and moved out, but out over the actual open ocean, it was still super thick. So pretty much dense fog from the surface to about 1000 feet,” he said. “We got on scene about 7:30,   And we made comms with the cruise ship, but we couldn’t actually see him down there. Getting down to the water and dense fog like that, and then conducting a medevac off the ship is obviously a very risky evolution. Hoisting itself is very risky to begin with.”

According to Oredson, the crew stayed airborne for almost an hour and a half deliberating, before deciding not to attempt the hoist. Without boats able to perform a rescue from the water, the crew returned to Sitka to wait for better conditions.  

“Down here, we just have the air station. So it’s the Coast Guard is going to do medevac it’s almost always the helicopter, and that particular vessel doesn’t have I guess, the little transport boats that they use to bring people in and out from shore,” said Oredson. “So we came back refueled and then took off again about 9:45. And by that point, the cruise ship had actually entered Sitka Sound near St. Lazaria Island and completely in the clear, and so we went out and conducted the medevac.”

Oredson said the crew took off a second time around 10 o’ clock and was able to complete the rescue within 45 minutes. The patient was then transported to emergency medical personnel waiting in Sitka, and was later reported as being in stable condition. 

Sen. Lisa Murkowski stopped in Sitka Friday while on the campaign trail to keep her seat in the US Senate. Originally from Ketchikan, the republican has represented the state for nearly 20 years on the senate floor, and has emerged as one of the most important swing votes in government. Murkowski sat down with KCAW’s Tash Kimmell to discuss her thoughts on issues ranging from climate change, to winning the millennial vote. 

In the days leading up to her visit to Sitka, Senator Lisa Murkowski voted against President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, keeping in line with the majority of her Republican colleagues in the senate. The bill, which passed on August 7th, is being hailed by some as a monumental step forward for climate action and clean energy investment. Murkowski, however, labeled it a partisan reconciliation measure that will ultimately increase taxes, spending and regulation. The senator defended her position, stressing a need for bipartisanship in the fight against climate change.

“If we do not do this on a bipartisan basis, it will not last. It will not last, and you will therefore not get the investment that you need to build out the energy infrastructure. It’s expensive, whether you’re putting in wind turbines, or solar farms, or a natural gas pipeline. None of this, none of this is cheap, and investors are looking for something that there’s going to be a return on their investment. That’s why they’re investors. That’s not a bad thing. But if there’s no certainty as to government policies, if they think it’s going to switch three years from now, when you got a new administration, they’re not putting the money up front. And so, we’ve got to give the most important thing that we can give to having lasting energy policy, lasting solutions for climate, is certainty from policy. And the only way you get certainty is when it comes through bipartisan approach.”

While considered a swing vote in the senate, one issue Murkowski insists she’s never wavered on is a woman’s right to choose. But in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, she helped block the Women’s Health Protection Act, a Democratic bill which aimed to codify protections established by Roe v. Wade. Instead, Murkowski offered her own legislation, the Reproductive Choice Act, which she suggests is better suited in its protections of reproductive rights. 

“Our legislation not only codifies Roe versus Wade, and Casey, but it also codifies Griswold, with regards to access to contraception, and not only for married couples, as Griswold does, but but codifies the other cases that make sure that contraception is available for all who would seek to use it. We’ve introduced this bill on a bipartisan basis, to Republicans, to Democrats. It has been filed, it has been called into question, because the debate is, ‘Well, how are you going to pass it?’ And the reality is that in order to advance it, we need more support. We need more support on the Republican side. And I acknowledge that.”

Although abortion is currently protected in the 49th state, Murkowski acknowledges that discussion of a consituional convention may threaten those protections. 

 “Alaska can’t put in place a trigger law that would ban abortion. But we are only protected so long as that constitution is as it is, and we know that on the ballot in November, will be an opportunity for Alaskans to weigh in and say whether or not they want to proceed with a constitutional convention. This is before us every 10 years, and this is the tenth year. So that is that is something that, quite honestly, I’m concerned about, that we could in fact lose that protection.”

The third-generation Alaskan has been in the Senate for 20 years, but she insists that it’s exactly that experience that will best serve the state’s youngest voters, millennials and Gen-Z. 

“It’s about not only your vision for the state of Alaska, but your ability to achieve that vision on behalf of the people of this state, and the value that you can bring. So if you are a young Alaskan, who’s just come to this state, and you want to stay here, you want to know, is there housing that is affordable? Will there be available childcare, if I decide that I should have children? What are my economic opportunities? Staying in a community where costs are high, transportation costs are high coming in and out? Can I afford to live here at a time when we’re seeing inflationary pressures that are as they are? I take it very personally, it’s almost one on one, what is it that you need to stay in a community that you care about? And I take that, personally, to try to deliver those results that will make a community like Sitka, a better place to live and work and raise a family.”

Alaska’s primary election and special U.S House election will be held on Tuesday August 16th. Polls will be open in Sitka  7 am to 8 pm at Harrigan Centennial Hall.

Port Alexander is a hard place to explain. It’s tiny, with less than 60 full-time residents, on the southern tip of Baranof Island. There’s no roads in or out, no cell service or municipal electricity. Perhaps PA is more of a lifestyle than a location.

Mostly PA is quiet, except for the sound of the rain, or whales breathing. Maybe a fishing boat pulling out of the harbor. But the most consistent sound is the hum of the radio in people’s homes. Raven Radio to be specific. Susan Taylor, longtime Port Alexander resident and part owner of the Laughing Raven Lodge, knows this first hand.

“Well, my husband’s really an addicted person to news. And so it is on 24/7 in my house,” she explains.

When I find her husband, Peter Mooney, he’s in his shop, sharpening his chainsaw…listening to the radio. 

“It’s like you know, when I was trying to give up smoking, especially in the morning with coffee, you know? I don’t know if my coffee tastes the same without Raven radio in the morning,” he says chuckling. “It’s nice to know what’s going on in the world every day…you get NPR in the morning and it’s just this sort of really important contact with the outside world. And then we get, you know, the local news, and on and on.”

The Sitka radio station broadcasts from a repeater on the couple’s property. The power for it comes from  generators owned by the city of Port Alexander, burning expensive diesel in the process. However, an ambitious new project by KCAW might be able to change that. Pete Tredish, is one of three engineers renovating Raven Radio’s transmitter. He says the station wants to take some of the pressure off the community’s energy reserves.

“It’s not easy to live in a town like this where you don’t have a city government that’s going to provide all the services that you get in a city, including electricity,” said Tredish. “It just seemed like it made sense for Raven Radio to step up and generate the electricity it needed to do its broadcasting.”

He says part of the project includes installing a wind machine and solar panels.

“We’re hoping by the end of it that we’ve installed enough wind and solar capacity, that, you know, sometimes we’re still going to need help from the diesel generator, but sometimes we’ll have some extra, and we’ll be able to contribute more electricity back into the battery bank,” he said. “The diesel’s real expensive, and, you know, sometimes supplies get disrupted in the winter. And so, just anything that we can do to help them conserve.”

This boost in power could not only help conserve diesel but also help Raven Radio transmit further off the coast, possibly reaching  vessels on the water. But building infrastructure in such a remote corner of Alaska is not a simple task. Even during our interview, Pete and I sat in darkness, without enough electricity to power the lights. 

“I mean, there are no stores here for food or for supplies,” he said. “Basic hardware store items, you know, every screw we had to think of beforehand, or get someone to send us later on.”

Longtime resident Paul Young recalls how exciting it was to hear KCAW for the first time in the 80s.

“Well, I remember when we first got it, it was like really? We get to have Raven Radio here? Oh, my goodness. Because we can get AM stations late at night in the winter, and that goes in and out,” said Young.

Marty Remond, who arrived in the 70s to be closer to the fishing grounds, echoed the sentiment. He says before KCAW residents could get some local stations, but coverage was spotty.

 “You had to string up a wire for an antenna to get maybe like, you could probably get Petersburg,” recalled Remond.

With modern technology, like the internet, Port Alexander doesn’t rely on the radio the way it used to. Still, Remond says  it continues to be an important source of news, weather, and general entertainment for the community.

“I’d say maybe half the households have satellite TV. And the rest of us don’t,” he explained. “Radio I guess is more important, especially if you don’t have any kind of television for news or weather or any of that stuff.”

As the age of technology continues to transform the way we consume media, it’s nice to know radio still has a hold on the people of Port Alexander. 

Editor’s Note: In the interest of transparency, Report For America reporter Tash Kimmell is employed by Raven Radio

A 64-year-old man was medevaced from a cruise ship in Chatham Strait Monday morning (7/18/22).

According to a Coast Guard press release, watchstanders at District 17 headquarters in Juneau received a call around 6 a.m. that a man aboard the Norwegian Encore had been suffering from stroke-like symptoms since 4:25 that morning. 

A helicopter crew from Air Station Sitka arrived on the scene around 7:30 am, and safely hoisted the patient from the ship in a rescue litter. The man was then transported to awaiting medical personnel at Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center for further emergency care. 

The patient was reportedly stable upon arrival in Sitka. 

As a child, George Anderson would spend his summers fishing in Chignik Lagoon, a remote Alaska Native village 400 miles southwest of Anchorage. For him, and the rest of the Chignik community, salmon is more than just a food source.

“You know, fish, it is a part of your life and your identity,” Anderson said. “Growing up, I think we really took it for granted that there was always, you know, some fish returning here,” said Anderson.

But as salmon runs dry up across Western Alaska, many in Chignik have been struggling to fill their freezer and smokehouses over the last few years.

“About 2018, when we did not meet our escapement goals for our early or later run, that’s when people really, really started getting concerned,” explained Anderson.

Anderson is the President of the Chignik Intertribal Coalition, an advocacy alliance created in response to the 2018 salmon collapse. But in the last four years, the shortage of fish has persisted as both the early and late runs failed to return in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021.

There’s no telling when or if the Chignik Sockeye stock will return, but the dwindling supply comes with grave economic and cultural implications. He says now is the time to act if they want to preserve their way of life, and ensure future food security.

 “It’s just really nice to be able to pass down to our kids and grandkids, the way we prepare fish and store it for winter,” he said. “There’s so many different stressors on our food web. In the face of climate change, it’s just very important to set up these food sharing networks.”

The Fish for Families initiative is becoming an integral part of a food supply network. The grassroots effort hopes to aid communities facing food scarcity across Alaska by sourcing and transporting thousands of pounds of fish. Currently the program only serves the Chignik region, but organizers have been working to raise funds so they can expand to communities in other parts of Western Alaska.

Natalie Sattler is the program director with Alaska Long Line Fishermen’s Association (ALFA), the organization behind “Fish for Families.” While the initiative started as a fish donation program in response to pandemic-related food insecurity and a struggling  seafood industry, two years later, Sattler says the need remains. 

“This is not just a result of the pandemic,” Sattler said. “There are these real issues that we want to help address.”

Sattler says the project is looking to capitalize on the abundance of other fisheries in the state. To fund and transport the fish, ALFA has partnered with  a handful of processors, fisherman and other orgs. For every 24 bucks donated, one salmon is delivered to a family.

 “We know that there’s, you know, these projected record-breaking run salmon runs in Bristol Bay. How can we leverage that or use that abundance to feed these other areas? So kind of Alaskan feeding Alaskans,” Sattler explained.

The project is currently relying on volunteers, charitable donations and federal grants to survive. But because it’s not entirely clear why Chignik’s stock has been so consistently low, the need may be ongoing. And it’s not an isolated event. Sattler says they hope expand to other communities, specifically in the Yukon- Kuskokwim River region, where Chum and Chinook runs are also suffering.  According to Katie Howard, fishery scientist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and lead researcher with the Salmon Ocean Ecology Program, scientists are seeing unprecedented declines. She says declining salmon stocks could have something to do with a warming ocean.

“We’ve seen a lot of drought and really warm temperatures in the river, especially in 2019,” she explained. “And in the ocean, we’ve seen these these really big marine heat waves that have spanned many, many consecutive years, and they’ve just been really large geographically and really, unlike anything that’s ever been seen before.”

While Howard’s research has focused primarily on the health of Chum and Chinook, she says more data on the Chignik’s Sockeyes’ life cycle is coming in the next  year. 

“One of the things that we’re hoping to get started next year is a survey in marine waters to get the same kinds of data we have for the Yukon, that would also collect information on juvenile Chignik salmon, and really zero in on what might be responsible,” said Howard.

 While the future of Western Alaska salmon runs looks uncertain, organizers of “Fish for Families” are working to ensure at least people in Chignik won’t go without fish this summer.

An insect infestation which was first reported in 2020, will continue to cause damage to a variety of trees throughout the Tongass this summer. 

Last summer’s unusually warm weather  fueled an explosion in the Western blackheaded budworm, leaving masses of browning trees in many areas of Southeast. The worm, which is the larval stage of the budworm moth,  is known to feed on the new growth  of trees,  leaving them with a brownish-red appearance. While they’ve been known to target Hemlock trees Dr. Elizabeth Graham, an entomologist for the USDA Forest Service Alaska Region, says budworm seem to be moving on to spruce this year.

“This is possibly the result of, you know, depleting the resource. There was so much defoliation on Hemlock last year. And so the females may have chosen to lay their eggs on spruce instead, since there’s maybe more of a foliage resource available than with the Hemlock,” explained Graham

According to the Forest Service, this is the first large scale outbreak Southeast has seen since the mid 90s. While the damage may seem severe as worms continue to feed over the coming weeks, according to Dr. Graham, these infestations are a natural part of the changing forest.

“They’re basically a cool driver of change, that they’re creating new gaps in the canopy, adding some more light to the forest floor, adding some more fertilizers to the forest floor. And so there, there are many ways can be beneficial,” she said

 The infestations occur on a 30-to-40 year rotation. Graham says they usually persists over the course of several years before naturally crashing, but she’s hopeful that we’re in the peak stages

“We’re kind of seeing that since they’re switching over to spruce now, and so they just can’t sustain at these levels. And so hopefully we’re reaching the peak,and that, you know, maybe this will be the last year,” said Graham. “But we’ll see how it goes and, you know, keep monitoring, and eventually it will definitely drop off. They just can’t last that long.”

While  most trees are expected to survive the outbreak, the Forest Service is encouraging visitors to document and share their observations of insects and tree damage  through the iNaturalist app. Photos, videos or information related to the budworm or its subsequent damage that is uploaded to the app will automatically be included in the Alaska Forest Health Observations Project, a citizen science project in iNaturalist.