Our stop over in Sitka reaches its end. We’re ready to go. The weather forecast predicts strong contrary winds, we’ll see.
We had a long discussion today with the person who defends the project to use geo thermal energy locally. Hot springs are numerous around and it shouldn’t be so difficult to take advantage of this natural power. The idea is growing up in the community but it’s still to the state of a project. No grant so far is dedicated to it. Geo thermal power could warm up green houses for the culture of vegetables and make a turbine produce electricity. An experimental farm is going very well next near Fairbanks, based on the Icelandic model.

Rain, rain and rain, one might think that all the water of the Creation is been dropped on us all at once... It’s a lot of water for us arriving from the Arctic which is dry, but for the locals, it’s quite normal, nothing special.
On Saturday the activity on board was dense to try to finish our technical list. Today, some of us went for a walk around Sitka while the rest of the team had a meeting with the formal Mayor, the new elected Mayor and the Attorney. The three of them are very open and push for the development of alternative energy. The city of Sitka is already working with hydro power but possibilities of geo thermal energy are in focus.

A storm hits the whole coast of South- East Alaska. It rains cats and dogs but the team keeps going with all duties we have to do during the stop over.
It’s too short to take a day off, we have so much to do...

Sitka, Alaska

The village is quiet in this early autumn. Fishing boats are resting in the harbour and crews are taking advantage of this period before winter to maintain, fix and clean their vessel. The only job they can not do is painting outside, everything is wet and soaked.
Sea lions are swimming back and forth between floats, mainly around occupied boats in hope to get fish.
We keep going with our field investigation. Fishermen bear witness of changes these last years. The sea temperature is rising up, the wind pattern is changing, and new species of fish come up north. The forest is changing too but we did not meet the ranger who will answer our questions yet. We have observed, following a meeting with Paul Olson, Director of the “Sitka Conservation Society”, a strong will to mobilize people around the topics of global change both in mitigation and adaptation in view to reduce the human footprint in Baranof Island. People involved are few as yet but their rank is growing every day. Sitka has the wish to become in the future a model city in terms of sustainability.