Wrangell Sentinel -

A couple of Sitkans on a fishing trip in October got a surprise as they got ready to lay a skate of halibut gear in Nakwasina Sound.

Their depth sounder revealed a sizable steep-sided cone on the ocean bottom at a depth of about 200 feet, and it was emitting something into the water about 12 miles north of Sitka.

Jacyn Schmidt, regional geoscience specialist for the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska happened to be on the boat. Such phenomena are her field of interest, but she hadn’t expected to find an unmapped feature on the seafloor. “It was kind of a really funky...