In a landmark move of fair-mindedness, the folks at the U.S. State Department have announced a new passport policy that will make life easier for many transgender travelers.
Starting June 17th, applicants are no longer required to have sexual reassignment surgery in order to receive a gender change on their passport.
According to CNN, an attending physician’s certification will be required to confirm “passport applicants have undergone treatment for gender transition. Limited-validity passports for applicants who are in the process of gender transition will also be available.”
The State Department also noted that the policy change was made to coincide with Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Month. Now if only the federal government would resolve that marriage issue…
That’s right – this hotel is, quite literally, garbage.
In an effort to raise awareness about the trashy state of Europe’s beaches, Rome erected a hotel covered with over 26,000 pounds of debris. The building, located on Capocotta Beach, is aptly named “Save the Beach Hotel” and is spear-headed by Corona. According to the website, the Save the Beach Hotel is a reminder to people about how filthy their beaches have become.
The website states:
“Our Corona Save the Beach campaign builds on the project by launching its own initiative to help preserve Europe’s beaches. Teaming up with environmental artist HA Schult, best known for his extraordinary ‘Trash Men’, we have created a pop-up hotel in the centre of Rome made almost entirely from rubbish collected from beaches across Europe. Our first visitor at the hotel was supermodel and eco-warrior Helena Christensen, as well as competition winners from Italy, Spain and the UK staying the night.”
It’s fascinating the amount of filth that can be discovered on a beach, and turned into a standing hotel. Corona plans to make this impression on other coastal cities around the world, and you can vote for the next endangered beach that the organization will clean up by clicking here.
Ok, Florida… how about it? While BP works to stop the oil spill, maybe we can build the world’s first crude oil hotel?
Cigarettes have gotten really pricey, but here’s a solution: take a trip to China. The city of Linfen, in Shanxi Province, has been named the “world’s most polluted city” by the World Bank, as the air quality is the equivalent of inhaling three packs of cigarettes a day. Coal is China’s main source of energy, and Shanxi Province is the leading coal producer. The same World Bank survey noted that 16 out of 20 of the world’s most polluted cities are in China.
The geniuses at VBS.TV sent a journalist to Linfen (which for some strange reason, has no tourism), to provide a first-person account of what it’s like to spend a day in Smog City. Unsurprisingly, residents have a high rate of lung disease and stomach and lung cancers, but most don’t wear face masks (in contrast to residents in many of Asia’s largest cities). Unfortunately, perma-smog is such a part of daily life, the dire environmental and human health consequences that are the result of coal mining lose their impact. Studies show that particulate from China’s factories and coal mines travels as far as the West Coast of North America.
Linfen serves as yet another heartbreaking reminder that globally, we need to work on reducing our energy consumption, and finding alternative resources. Don’t forget to turn the lights off when you leave.
British ocean rower Roz Savage arrived in Madang, Papua New Guinea yesterday, completing the third, and final, stage of her solo row across the Pacific Ocean. Her arrival marked an end to an adventure that she has dedicated more than five years of her life to finishing.
Roz first came up with the idea of rowing across the Pacific after she completed a solo row across the Atlantic back in 2005. That journey took 103 days to complete and covered 2935 miles of open water. In 2007 she launched her first attempt on the Pacific but was forced to return to land a few days after getting underway. Undaunted, she returned to the water in 2008, and completed the first stage of her journey, rowing the 2324 miles from San Francisco to Hawaii in just under 100 days. In 2009, stage two took her from Hawaii to Tuvalu in the South Pacific, covering an additional 3158 miles over 104 days.
For her third, and final stage, Roz planned to row from Tuvalu to Australia, but strong ocean currents, persistent winds, and other conditions prevented her from traveling that far south. Instead, she drifted towards Papua New Guinea, where she finally stepped back onto dry land after covering an additional 2248 miles in just 45 days.
By completing this final leg, Roz has now become the first woman to row solo across the Pacific, a voyage that took a total of 249 days to complete and covered 7730 miles in total. A former management consultant for a major bank in the U.K., Roz quit her job back in 2001 to pursue a life of adventure. Since then, she has become a tireless environmental activist who has worked hard to raise awareness of the plight of the world’s oceans and is likely to continue pursuing that cause in the future. To that end, she recently launched a new website called Eco Heroes that has become a social network for the environmentally conscious set to connect.
Enough about that other Australian reef. Ningaloo, located nearly 800 miles north of Perth in Western Australia, is where it’s at. “It” being an astonishing array of aquatic life, a lack of crowds, and plenty of budget-to-mid-range options including camping, backpackers, and smallish resorts.
In January, the Ningaloo Coast (which includes the160-mile-long reef/national marine park, Cape Range, and adjacent dune fields, marine areas, and islands) was nominated for a World Heritage listing, in recognition of the area’s “outstanding natural beauty, biological richness, and international geological significance.”
The world’s largest fringing reef (it grows directly from the shoreline, or a shallow backreef zone), Ningaloo also ranks near the top in terms of biodiversity, and the number of species found within a limited range. Unsurprising, then, that in a one-hour, offshore snorkel, I saw scads of impressive marine life (a large white-tip reef shark, giant potato cod, sea turtles, octopi, moray eels, countless fish) within arm’s reach. Depending upon the time of year, Ningaloo offers visitors the opportunity to view and/or swim with dolphins, dugongs, manta rays, sea turtles, sharks, and Humpback whales.What Ningaloo is best-known for, however, are whale sharks. The world’s largest fish, whale sharks are filter-feeders that can reach over 40 feet in length. Unlike most sharks, they swim by moving their entire bodies from side-to-side. Very little is known about these gentle, migratory creatures, in part because they don’t need to surface for air, and can remain on the ocean floor- at depths up to 2300 feet- for years at a time. They’re found in warm-temperate and tropical seas, but Ningaloo Reef is considered the most reliable spot to find them, when they congregate to feed off the coral spawn April through late June. Although listed as “vulnerable to extinction,” enabling the public to swim with whale sharks is an incredibly effective way to promote education about the species, as well as aid researchers. In Australia, the animals are protected under the Wildlife Conservation Act, and Conservation and Land Management Act. Swims are strictly regulated by the Department of Environment and Conservation, including how many swimmers are allowed in the water at one time (10), and how far they must remain from the sharks (16 feet, and behind the pectoral fins). A spotter plane is used to locate the sharks, which are usually found up to several miles offshore.
Whale sharks have a pattern of spots marking their bodies that is distinct to each animal. At Ningaloo, swimmers are encouraged to use non-flash photography to capture the spot patterns behind their gills, and note any scars or other unusual features to help scientists track migratory patterns and keep a census.
It’s been a longtime goal of mine to swim with whale sharks, so when I found out an assignment in Australia coincided with their migration, I made arrangements to fly up to Ningaloo, via Learmonth Airport outside of Exmouth. Exmouth isn’t so much a town as it is a tourist pit-stop/marina in the midst of an arid, scrubby landscape of flat red earth and termite mounds, and approximately a bajillion emus, wallabies, and kangaroos. It’s a place of eerie, desolate beauty, and a stark contrast to the turquoise waters of the reef. Don’t expect to find anything to do besides swim, fish, dive, snorkel, and enjoy the scenery. For that reason, I’d recommend staying in one of the backpackers or campgrounds outside of town. All of the snorkel and dive boat outfitters will pick you up at your accommodation, regardless of where you’re staying.
I had my swim arranged as part of a package offered by Sal Salis, a two-year-old, tented, luxury eco-camp an hour south of Exmouth. The property is in the dunes just off the beach; my epic snorkel occurred right offshore. Sal Salis works exclusively with Ocean Eco Adventures to charter full-day, 16-passenger whale shark swims/reef snorkeling. Once onboard, we were issued wetsuits and snorkeling gear, and taken for a test swim to assess our abilities.
We were given explicit instructions on how to enter the water behind our guide, and the protocol for swimming with the sharks. After an “all-clear,” we were free to break away from the group and swim on the far (right) side of the sharks. Fortunately, my group consisted of a couple of kids and their parents, which meant they tagged behind the guide, in the shark’s wake. I was literally able to swim on my own. I should add that while slow-moving, keeping pace with a 25-foot shark for distances up to a mile (I asked) is no small feat. Even with fins on, I had to power swim using a combination sidestroke the entire way, so I could watch the shark while keeping out of range of its thrashing tail.
The exertion was well worth the effort. I’m a spiritually bankrupt sort, but swimming alongside such a magnificent animal is the closest I’ve ever come to a religious experience. There is simply no way to describe the feeling of being alone with a whale shark, in the blue gloom of the open ocean. The accompanying high of pushing myself to my physical limits added to my euphoria. Watching the sharks dive, trailing a clump of hitchhiking remoras from their pale underbellies, and disappear into the murky depths is the most beautiful, haunting thing I’ve ever seen.
By day’s end, we’d had four separate swims: two shorter runs beside smaller sharks (12 to 15-footers), the last two as described above. The boat had also been surrounded by a “super pod” of spinner dolphins that entertained us with their aerial acrobatics. It’s expensive (depending upon the operator and if you observe, snorkel, or dive, expect to spend at least $265/pp) but it’s one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences that has no equal. Just to make sure, I’m already saving up for the next time.
If you’d like to adopt a whale shark to aid with research costs, check out ECOCEAN.