Robert Woolsey

Members of the Gary Paxton Industrial Park board, Sitka Assembly, and city staff pose for Daily Sentinel photographer James Poulson, at the future site of Sitka’s marine haulout. (KCAW/Woolsey)

The Sitka business community wants to quantify the economic impact of the internet outage. A survey has been circulating since September, and will close before Thanksgiving. Organizers hope the results will help Sitka advocate for a more robust connection, or at least redundancy.

“We do believe that there is a food shortage facing Southern Resident Killer Whales (SRKW), we just don’t see the shortage occurring in the summer and fall,” says Dr. Andrew Trites, director of the Marine Mammal Research Unit at the University of British Columbia. His three-year study of chinook abundance in the Salish Sea suggests that endangered SRKW have more access to salmon than their northern counterparts, whose population is growing. (photo/NOAA Fisheries)

The U.S. Coast Guard says there was reportedly five people aboard the fishing boat.

No one has ever gone out and counted the chinook in the Southern Resident killer whale's habitat – until now.

Author Ken Post didn’t take up writing until 2014, near the end of a four-decade career in the US Forest Service. His new book “Greyhound Cowboy” is a surprisingly strong collection of stories about ordinary people in challenging circumstances. “A sign of a good story,” Post says, “is it makes you think.” (KCAW photo)

The Sitka School Board is likely facing another huge budget crunch next year. Perhaps not quite as bad as this year, which saw the elimination of 14 teaching positions, and the demise of popular programs like Blatchley's Discover Your Potential – but still bad.

“(Child care) is not something we can outsource. It has to be local, it needs to be available to us – that we can walk down the street and receive the service. It’s critical infrastructure to the economy,” Berglund told the Chamber of Commerce. The Betty Eliason Childcare Center is one of two child care facilities in downtown Sitka. (KCAW file photo)

Sitka’s greenhouse gas emissions inventory is currently in draft form. Gabel hopes Sitkans take a look and send her their insights and corrections.

Jacquie Hedrick guides a first-grader through a reading (and writing!) lesson. Last year, Hedrick was one of five reading interventionists in grades K-3 in Sitka. This year, she’s the only one, with a roster of 28 students in her classroom. (KCAW/Woolsey)