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Seismic activity in the Aleutians has increased in recent years, including a magnitude-6.2 earthquake that hit just 40 miles south of Unalaska earlier this month; the Alaska Supreme Court has ruled against a group of young people who sued the state trying to change its approach to fossil fuel production; and Monday is the deadline to apply for seats on three different community advisory groups.

A collection of audio reels made in the Aleutian region in the 1970s was digitized and will soon be available online through the University of Alaska Fairbanks.The recordings were part of a school project that started in 1977 when a group of Unalaska students and their teacher Ray Hudson started collecting texts about the culture, language and history of the Aleutians. They called themselves the “Cuttlefish Class” – a name they picked out together – and they called their project the “Cuttlefish Series.”The students put together six hefty volumes meant to bring the island community and Unangax̂ culture into the classroom. They contain things like fishing stories, letters, recipes for alodics (an Unangax̂ form of fry bread), as well as memories from Makushin and the other lost villages that were forcibly evacuated during World War II.

The M/V Kennicott will replace the Tustumena on some of its summer sailings, but the Aleutians are going to take a big hit. Passengers on the May ferry can still ride, but the replacement ship is too large to dock at Akutan and False Pass. That means there will be no ferry service to those communities until the Tustumena is repaired in July, and the June sailing has been cancelled altogether.

The family of a toddler killed last month in St. Paul is advocating to bring his body home, after the first homicides in the small Pribilof Island community in 15 years; the M/V Tustumena won’t be making it out to the Aleutian chain until July at the earliest; and, while some see the Alaska Bycatch Task Force as a possible turning point, others say they’re skeptical of what it can accomplish.

The Army Corps of Engineers is moving closer to dealing with a contaminated World War II-era military site long abandoned in the Aleutian Islands. At a meeting Wednesday night in Unalaska, representatives from the Army Corps of Engineers said they would send a contractor to Chernofski Harbor in May. They aim to remove around 800 tons of soil and debris that was contaminated by diesel oil tanks during World War II. The cleanup site covers more than 1,200 acres in Chernofski Harbor, on the southwestern edge of Unalaska Island. Chernofski village was inhabited for thousands of years, but people stopped living there in the early 20th century, and the navy operated a port there from 1942 to 1945.

How sound waves from a volcano in Tonga traveled to the Aleutian Islands; the Alaska Legislature supports a lawsuit by university students against the Dunleavy administration; and the City of Unalaska reported 81 new cases of COVID-19 over the three-day weekend.

Communities across the West Coast woke up Saturday morning to tsunami advisory alerts. An underwater volcano near the Kingdom of Tonga had erupted and sent waves thousands of miles across the ocean.Waves of up to about three feet reached parts of Alaska by Saturday morning. But hours before those waves arrived, sounds from the blast reached the homes of many Alaskans — all the way from Juneau to the Aleutians.

A tsunami advisory for communities in coastal Alaska, including the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands, was canceled Saturday afternoon. The National Weather Service issued the tsunami advisory for much of coastal California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and Alaska following a volcanic eruption near Tonga in the South Pacific on Friday.

The National Weather Service has issued a tsunami advisory for Unalaska following a volcanic eruption in the Tonga Islands. No evacuation has been issued due to insignificant wave projections. This is a developing story.

There are more Indigenous people living in Alaska than anywhere else in the United States. But Alaska Native students are vastly underrepresented on college campuses. And when it comes to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math — fields that are especially dominated by white men — Alaska Native students face even greater barriers to entry. Dr. Michele Yatchmeneff wants to change that.