Panama City Beach, Florida, puts a guarantee on fun, despite oil spill

by Leigh Caldwell on

Amid concerns about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, some travelers are reconsidering plans for a Florida beach vacation this summer.

That’s why the Panama City Beach tourism folks have issued a “Real Fun Guarantee” that promises a $200 future travel credit if your stay at the beach is affected by the oil spill.

The program applies to new reservations, booked now through June 10, 2010, for stays at certain properties in the Panama City beach area, including the Bay Point Marriott Golf Resort & Spa, Beach Side Resort Vacation Rentals, Origin at Seahaven and several others.

If government officials close the beach or must be actively cleaning the beach during your vacation in the Panama City Beach area, you will get a $200 credit toward a return visit to the same property. The credit must be used by June 11, 2011.

Florida state officials take steps to stem oil spills’ impact on tourism

by Leigh Caldwell on

For now at least, none of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is affecting Florida’s beaches. And that’s exactly the message that state officials are trying to get out to keep vacationers from changing their plans.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist spent the weekend off-shore fishing off the coast of Destin, telling TV station WJHG, “The weather’s gorgeous. There’s not any oil on the beaches at all.”

And Florida Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink is asking BP, the owner of the drilling rig that’s causing the spill, to fund a global advertising campaign to tell potential travelers that Florida is still open for business.

“We must aggressively advertise that Florida’s beaches remain clean and our seafood is safe,” Sink wrote in a letter to BP officials.

Visit Florida, the state’s tourism marketing agency, is providing live updates on the oil spill’s impact for visitors.

Officials representing the Florida Keys and Miami-Fort Lauderdale area are also worried about the oil spill’s impact. State and federal representatives met with scientists Monday in Broward County to discuss the possibility that the oil might hit their beaches, too.

The Miami Herald reports that Monday, the spill was about 80 miles from the Gulf’s “loop current,” an area that could carry the oil into the Florida Keys and around to the East Coast.

Broward County tourism director Nicki Grossman told the Herald that hotels in her area are getting “hundreds” of calls a day regarding the oil spill. If oil hits Broward beaches this summer, it could mean $10 million a day in lost revenue, Grossman said.

Rat Spills Worse than Oil Spills?

by Catherine Bodry on

There are no trees on Rat Island, a tiny outcrop on the Western end of Alaska’s Aleutian chain. There’s also not too much wildlife, due in part to the thousands of rats that inhabit this small rock. Wildlife managers are hoping to give the island’s namesake the proverbial boot in order to restore seabird populations, which have no natural defenses against land predators.

A shipwreck in 1780 spilled its rodent load, and since then the rats have been in charge. This problem isn’t unique to Rat Island; remote islands around the world deal with infestations of the non-native species. Rat-removal programs have been popping up in Canada and New Zealand, as rats are blamed for half of all extinctions since the 1600s. I’ll repeat that: rats are blamed for half of all extinctions since the 1600s!

The results of a rat invasion are so devastating that wildlife refuge managers have maintained “rat-spill” emergency responses at Alaska’s ports similar to oil-spill contingency plans. In fact, Art Sowls, a biologist with the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge argues that “it’s entirely possible that in a shipwreck situation, the environmental damage created by the introduction of rats into the environment would be even worse than that of a major oil spill.” I remember a couple of years ago that some rats were spotted around the airport in Anchorage, and a massive effort was unleashed to exterminate the rodents and find the cause of the “leak.”

So far as I know, there hasn’t been an infestation on Alaska’s mainland. But I think I’ll be steering clear of the islands for a while.

[via Reuters]