“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 Sound Science Center is hosting an octopus naming event for their new octopus, who was found last summer in Tenakee Springs. Sitkans can submit names by making a donation on the center’s website. On Saturday, Jan. 31, each of the entered names will be written on a card and drawn from a bowl to fill in 16 spots of a 32 seeded double elimination bracket. Then, over the month of February, Sitkans will be able to vote on which name is the best until only one name remains. Maia Carter, STEAM Coordinator at SSSC, joined the Morning Interview to discuss the upcoming family-friendly event, where Sitkans can learn about octopus anatomy from specimens, meet the new octopus, and solve an eight-armed-mystery. Listen to the conversation here:

Mount Edgecumbe students work with a Science in the School volunteer during a class on octopus anatomy. All photos by Ed Schoenfeld.

Marine biologist Reid Brewer stands at the front of a Mount Edgecumbe classroom, dangling an octopus from his hands

“So what we’re going to do is to pass out some of these octopus. We’ve got enough to do an octopus for every two or three people,” Brewer says.

The students, from mostly rural Alaska and attending the state-run boarding high school, are about to take them apart.

“For dissection etiquette, don’t touch people with slimy hands. I would recommend against fixing your hair after we’ve started,” Brewer says.

Marine biologist Reid Brewer shows an octopus to Mount Edgecumbe science students.

Some greet the slimy mollusks’ arrival with disgust, then curiosity and a little giggling.

Brewer holds up an eight-armed pacific octopus and the interactive lesson begins.

“Each of the arms is covered with 230 to 280 suckered discs. This octopus could probably hold about 4,000 to 5,000 pounds using these suckered discs,” he says.

Brewer is usually based in Unalaska, working as an agent for the Alaska Marine Advisory Program.

But this particular week, he’s teaching students at Edgecumbe and other schools, as part of Sitka Whalefest’s Science in the Schools program.

“So I want you to look at the center part,” he tells the students. “Lift up the legs, where all the legs come together underneath it. And you should find a black, parrot-like beak. It’s right in the middle.” (Learn more about the giant pacific octopus.)

The students become focused as they locate, then remove, the beaks. With Brewer’s instructions, and program volunteers’ encouragement, they start searching for a variety of organs.

A few miles away, Sitka middle school students are learning how seals regulate body temperature – by dipping their faces into cold water. And high schoolers are being briefed about marine acoustics.

“We’re trying to bring in scientists who have cutting edge ideas and are good at working with students,” says Steve Lewis of Tenakee, Science in the Schools’ program coordinator.

“Part of my role is as an educator and a scientist to try to bridge that gap to help some of the scientists figure out some of the tricks to really integrating and making kids remember what they talked about and drawing them into the system,” he says.

Lewis says most students respond well, and it’s not hard to spot which ones are interested in marine biology.

An Edgecumbe student gets ready to work on a small octopus.

He says Sitka students make a good audience, since many are from fishing families and have experience with ocean life. But he says Edgecumbe students seem the most interested in dissections.

“A lot of them are from Coastal communities around northern Alaska, and you can just see their eyes opening. They’ve done this before with hunting animals but they’re learning so much more about their physiology and what these organs that they were just pitching out as offal are doing for these animals and how it adapts them to their place in the ocean,” Lewis says.

Dissections – formally called necropsies – are difficult for some students. At least one lost her lunch during Brewer’s octopus class.

But Lewis says most get over it and do fine.

“Certainly you have some kids holding their noses. But usually once you get in there and things start to be interesting and you’re pulling lenses out of eyeballs and passing them around, all of a sudden they lose their fear,” he says.

Back in the classroom, Brewer instructs students as they cut into the octopus’ mantle, looking for internal organs.

“OK, so what I want you to do with the mantel is to turn it so the eyes are facing down and there’s a little slit back here and I want you to cut that slit,” he says.

Brewer circles the classroom, offering advice where it’s needed. He stops to help three students from Southeast and the Interior.

Katie Wilmarth from Red Devil, Brittany Woods-Orrison from Rampart, and Natasha Kookesh from Angoon dissect their octopus.

“You guys get it? Yeh. So once you that I want you to cut this way all the way and what we want to do is to peel the mantle back from the organs. Just use your fingers,” he says.

This is the fourth necropsy for Katie Wilmarth from Red Devil, Brittany Woods-Orrison from Rampart, and Natasha Kookesh from Angoon.

“We started with a crayfish and then we went to a frog. And then a rat. The rat was really gross. … This one’s the coolest one so far,” the students say.

Brewer continues around the room helping students locate and identify organs, explaining their functions as he goes.

Octopus sessions were offered to more than a dozen classes hosted by WhaleFest’s Science in the Schools program. It also organized another 60 sessions on other marine topics.

Coordinator Lewis says he’d like to add ocean acidification classes. And some day, he hopes to offer similar sessions in other Southeast communities.