Curiosity Saves

09/07/2026

Imagine seeing this in the wild and thinking, “Let’s capture it and put it in a tank for show!”

While these photos are from a Transient orca T-Party, the Transient orca families share these waters with the genetically unique and critically endangered Southern Resident orcas.

Only about 75 Resident orcas remain, and their population is declining. They feed on salmon, including an endangered Chinook salmon. Their numbers plummeted after the likes of SeaWorld captured and shipped them around the world for show and life in captivity. In captivity, they suffer severe psychological trauma and health issues.

The Resident orca population hasn't recovered. With so few members, they have low genetic diversity, making breeding success challenging. Weak salmon populations from overfishing and poor river watershed management in BC result in malnutrition. Pollutants, human disturbances, and urbanization all make recovery more challenging for the S. Resident orca.

There are still about 55 orcas in captivity in the United States, China, Japan, Russia, France, and Spain.

Wild orcas are some of the most intelligent animals on the planet and can swim up to 160 kilometers in a day, living in complex, highly social groups.

As the world transitions away from captive cetaceans in aquariums, many of the orcas held in captivity are the last generation in places like the United States, and I certainly hope no more are ever bred or taken from their homes.

Ethical whale-watching can be a great way to enjoy whales in their natural environment and help economies shift away from commercial whale hunting, and disincentivize the capture of whales for aquariums.

But whale-watching can bring its own harms.

Choose companies that:
•Support whale conservation and science
•Don’t chase, harass, or place nets around whales (I noticed this in Japan!)
•Look into free land-based sightings
•Keep a safe distance
•Minimize noise, air, and water pollution
•Follow regulations in places with strict regulations, and go above and beyond in places without.
•Remember: wild whale sightings and whale breaches are never guaranteed.

09/06/2026

Ain’t no party like an Orca T-Party! 

What a joy it was to witness this orca T-Party. A T-Party is when several different family groups of Transient orcas meet to socialize, mate, or hunt together. 

Here we are seeing three different family groups.

T36BS led by Matriarch Flapjack

T12405 led by Matriarch Field. 

T137A - Jack, the socially awkward male who recently has been seen more with his grandma’s family group than his mom’s. Perhaps Mom sent him off to Grandma's for the summer. Haha

We had friends visiting us that we made when we lived in Munich, so we had a great week being tourists in our home city and booking a local responsible whale-watching tour. We were fortunate to witness this T-Party, which is rather rare. 

The waters around Vancouver, in the Salish Sea, are home to two, and occasionally three, distinct types of orcas: the Transient and the Resident.

Orcas are the most widely distributed marine mammal, dominating every ocean on the planet. Each region has orcas that have developed a unique diet, social structure, and behaviors, from wearing dead salmon as hats to sinking yachts to socializing with porpoises. 

The transient orcas here feed on marine mammals, from porpoises to seals, and travel in smaller and more flexible groups. They are less predictable, traveling after marine mammals. 

Orcas are a favorite marine animal to many—and I love them too, but growing up in the Arctic, I often see them through the lens of human-driven climate change in the Arctic. 

Historically, this species is not adapted to the cold, icy waters of the Arctic, a region where bowhead and beluga whales and other Arctic mammals have enjoyed relative peace from this Apex Predator. 

However, as Arctic ice melts, transient orcas, the only animal known to hunt bowhead whales, have begun entering these more northern waters for longer periods of time. 

This certainly isn’t the orcas' fault, but with a warming Arctic already bringing total ecosystem upheaval to the Arctic, this new predator will likely dramatically change the Arctic marine food web.

09/02/2026

The 2026/2027 El Niño is shaping up to be a Super or Very Strong El Niño event. It is already reshaping global weather patterns, threatening food and water security, economic commerce, and ecological integrity. As regions around the world prepare for extreme drought, forest fires, water scarcity, extreme heat, and total climate upheaval, we are likely to see some impacts to the travel and tourism sector.

Travelers should be aware of and on high alert for the upcoming El Niño season, with extreme heat forcing closures of cultural sights, water restrictions, higher food prices, disruptions to transit, and more.

Strong El Niños in the past (there have only been 5 recorded events) have brought famine that killed 50 million people, a 16% decline in global coral reefs, a population collapse of the Galápagos penguin population, and led to the hottest recorded year in recorded human history.

This comprehensive guide breaks down El Niño for travelers and outlines how extreme climate shifts may affect your upcoming travel plans, and offers actionable ways to travel ethically, empathetically, and safely.

The 2026/2027 El Niño is shaping up to be a Super or Very Strong El...

08/13/2026

Kinda chic, regenerative tourism edition. 

I don’t normally get into trends, but I had fun with this one. These are just some of the guiding principles I try to embody while planning sustainable and regenerative tourism experiences. 

If any of these are your thing, then say hello in the comments and introduce yourself. 

If you are doing any of these things, you’re doing great! See what else you can tackle. And remember, none of us are perfect; these are just some important things to work toward where you can. Each of these can be applied to your style of travel too, whether you like more luxury experiences, touristy highlights, hanging by the beach, or deep in a city exploring, or whether you like traveling in rural areas on a budget, foodie experiences, or history and culture, find ways to adapt these to work for you and your travel style!

If you’re new here, I’m Sooz. I hope to empower you with knowledge so you can make more informed choices and leave the places you visit a little better than when you arrive. 

What would you add? What are you working on? What have you got down?

Each photo has a unique caption. 

📷Some communities have done a lot of the hard work for us and implemented community-wide regenerative tourism systems. Aligning our behaviors with their existing system can help the community achieve their goals with tourism rather than detract from them.

I know a lot of people stick to certain hotel brands due to loyalty points. But what happens when that hotel becomes problematic, building a resort in the middle of a wildlife migration route? What happens when that hotel brand puts up ICE agents? Moving away from these hotels when you have brand loyalty can be hard. That’s how they keep you. 

As someone without brand loyalty, I feel free to make the best choice for each community I visit. I can still book boutique independent luxury hotels, local beds and breakfasts, or any other choice that supports local communities.

I do sometimes book a bigger hotel brand and that's ok, but it's more rare and I feel no loyalty to always make that choice.

Rather than a traditional travel offset, try donating 1% of your total trip costs to a local c

08/11/2026

“Umm…those trees on fire?” I pointed to a group of gum trees on the side of the road with charred black bark and low-intensity ember burn at the base. “Should we be concerned?” I asked our guide urgently, confused as to why he seemed unfazed.

“Oh, they’re supposed to be on fire!” He replied.

We were in Kakadu National Park in Australia on the lands of the Bininj and Munguy First Peoples.

As the oldest continuous living culture and society in the world, the traditional owners of Kakadu can trace their roots back about 65,000 years. The stories painted on the rocks here chronicle rising sea levels, changes in species biodiversity, and the coming of white men.

Throughout it all, they’ve actively managed their lands, engaging in fine-scale mosaic controlled burns as a land management tool.

This is why conservation practices that ignore the human element and take a complete hands-off approach, separating humans from nature, are deeply misguided. Indigenous cultures have passed down knowledge to use the land sustainably, manage it for human health and thriving biodiversity. Many of the plants and animals here rely on small fires that are neither too hot nor too intense.

The people here have harnessed that power.

Recently, the Government of Australia returned many assets in the area to their traditional owners, while Kakadu National Park has entered a co-management relationship.

When we visited Kakadu, we bought a $40 parks pass, with over 40% going directly back to support the traditional owners and funds for a bush ranger program.

These rangers work with modern scientists to bring indigenous land management practices into the modern era.

There are 6 seasons in Kakadu. Each season dramatically changes the landscape from vast soaked wetlands to dry grasslands.

Engaging in mosaic burns, as they’ve done for thousands of years, perfectly timed with seasonality, generates new life and reduces the chance of intense and severe wildfires breaking out uncontrollably.

This is what I mean when I say I support Land Back.

This is what I mean when I say support Indigenous-led land management.

This is what I mean when I say that humans are part of nature.

08/05/2026

Years ago, my parents drove through Jasper National Park, Canada. They spoke of Jasper with love for its unfathomable beauty. It remained at the top of my list for years.

When I visited last year, I wept uncontrollably—not because of the beauty, but because of the loss from a devastating wildfire that tore through the town and park. Black, charred trunks extended as far as I could see.

A momma bear and 2 cubs wandered out of the burned forest. These cubs will never know the home where their mother raised the previous generation.

Above them, an eagle chick in its nest. As a parent landed, I wondered how long the tree would stand. The chick, a sign of new life, but would it survive without the windbreak from a healthy forest?

We set up camp among black stumps with little privacy. Some people had the nerve to complain! A herd of elk roams through the campground, nibbling grass with the apocalyptic view behind them.

Driving through town was heavy. Rows of demolished houses across from a container park for displaced residents.

We checked with the Jasper tourism board beforehand to see what campground was open and if visitors were welcome in early 2025, but sitting in the remaining part of town, eating pizza and b**r, felt strange.

Without living root systems to absorb the water, the rain flooded the Valley of the Five Lakes, threatening to overtake the highway.

We did find pockets of old Jasper. We sat in silence in awe at the beauty of the jagged peaks and healthy forest by Maligne Lake. We reflected on the magnitude of the Athabascan glacier and undisturbed alpine systems with bighorn sheep around us at Wilcox Pass.

After a fire, people talk about rebirth, that life finds a way. Ancient forests DO have resilience to fires. I don’t want to stamp out hope, but with worsening climate change and colonial forest management, fires become hotter and more frequent, stripping away that natural resilience.

Eventually, forests undergo a regime shift, a sudden, persistent change in structure and function pushed past a tipping point.

Life recovers, yes, but in many places it will never be the same.

For this, I mourned. I will never see the Jasper my parents saw.

07/02/2026

Happy Canada Day!

As some of you know, while I’ve been Canadian since birth (Dad is Canadian, growing up in Saskatchewan), I was born and raised in Alaska, USA. My upbringing was what I best describe as uniquely Alaska, but there were elements of Canadianism in my childhood. Though I think I finally got my dad’s sense of humor after watching Letterkenny. 

When I moved to Germany. I never saw myself returning to North America. But life led me back here, and I am eternally grateful I was able to use my Canadian citizenship to move to Vancouver, bringing my Australian husband with me. 

When I arrived in Canada, I was in somewhat of a limbo. As a Canadian, everyone expected me to have a tax history, Canadian or at least US credit, know what an SIN number was….  Adjusting took a bit of time; I had reverse culture shock and culture shock at the same time. 

One of the things my partner and I decided to do during our time here was to see as much of Canada as possible, starting with our home province. Our mission was to really get to know British Columbia —the cities, the rural agricultural zones, the small towns, the nature—coastal, mountain, forest, desert —and to understand the diversity of First Nations culture and peoples and understand immigrant life here too. 

I haven’t seen it all, but one thing I can say is that I’ve truly fallen in love with British Columbia. It reminds me of home in many ways, but without the reasons I left Alaska. There are some beautiful places, cultures, nature, and people. There are also some deep systemic issues in this country. I do know there is no Canada without Land Back and reconciliation, a lesson learned from my travels. 

With every new place I see, I gain more appreciation for my new home. I can’t wait to see more. 

Over the years, we’ve covered a lot of ground, so this Canada Day I wanted to say thanks to Canada for providing an incredible home for myself and my immigrant husband and show a few of my fav places in BC. 

Where is your favorite place in BC or Canada?

Created on the lands of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation) and the səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh Nation).

06/30/2026

A love letter to Taipei…

I had no idea what to expect. As soon as we landed in Taipei from Japan, there was like this release with people being more comfortable expressing themselves—queer couples embracing, women working more types of jobs, and open, genuine conversations.

Rather than a city where people just rushed from A to B, we noticed more people out enjoying community spaces together.

I instantly noticed less plastic compared to Japan. Many city scooters were electric, with battery-swapping stations throughout. The sustainability initiatives were noticeable.

Taipei has creative parks converted from industrial buildings; we loved the innovative, local, and sustainable design concepts, shopping more in Taipei than Tokyo, supporting local designers and Indigenous businesses. 

And don’t even get me started on the food…. I have never had such good Asian vegan food in my life. We got to try vegan versions of China’s 4 major cuisine regions, along with creative fusion takes. 10/10 would eat it all again.

Taipei is surrounded by hiking trails you can start right from the city streets. We spent our nights trying to escape the daytime heat, only to hike in the humidity of night with stunning city views.

There is even more hiking in nearby Yangmingshan National Park, where we enjoyed friendly exchanges with fellow hikers at the summit. The coastal geology park was amazing!

The landmarks were big, grand, and intricate with minimal crowds in October.

Of course, Taipei isn’t perfect. We had people recommend we visit dolphin parks, which are a major problem here. But I was able to have conversations about why these weren’t for us. Our guide was quick to understand and suggest alternatives for our travel style. We noticed some economic inequality and other concerns with animal welfare. There was some ignorance about the Indigenous groups here before people came from China, but we noticed some reconciliation efforts too.

But, all in all, wow, we fell in love with Taipei and can’t wait to come back and see more of Taiwan. 

I’m finally writing up my Taipei content, so let me know if you have any questions.

06/26/2026

Would €5 or €50 get you to rethink a dream holiday?

Venice’s ongoing experiment in over-tourism management, the Tourist Access Fee, is now in its third year. What began in 2024 as a trial to tax and curb day-trippers has continued, but major changes are on the horizon, including the possibility of a 900% price increase.

After years of past attempts falling flat due to political gridlock, this fee finally launched with a clear target: the day-tripper/.

When launched, many locals were concerned that charging admission risked turning their city into a theme park. The low fee was cited as doing little to deter day-trippers while ignoring the root causes of local displacement.

The initiative has done little to impact visitor numbers; the historic center still welcomes 25 to 30 million annual tourists to a city of fewer than 50,000 residents, with very few staying overnight. However, with more days added year over year, the fee generates an increasing amount of revenue.

In my opinion, €5 was never going to deter someone from a trip of a lifetime to Venice. It should have always been about generating revenue; sustainable tourism management here is capital-intensive and requires serious funding. Charging day-trippers, who have the biggest impact and don’t pay hotel tax, is entirely fair.

However, raising the fee to €50 won't do much to reduce day-trippers, but will generate a lot of revenue.

Perhaps Venice should pair these fees with robust educational campaigns, actual capacity limits, and better cruise regulation. Punitive measures should be balanced with positive incentives, such as uplifting local guides, creating community-backed tourism pledges, and offering tangible benefits to travelers who choose to stay overnight and support the local economy.

Raising the price of fees can actually incentivize more people. At €50 a person, you can make a lot of money the more people visit. We’ve seen something similar happen with a per-passenger head tax on cruise ships in Alaska. Bigger cruise ships = more money.

So, is this a tool for disincentivizing day-trippers or actually better used as a way to fund costly city management and sustainable tourism development?

06/18/2026

India’s Supreme Court recently passed sweeping tourism reforms, including a ban on cell phone use in tiger reserves, such as Jim Corbett Tiger Reserve. The move aims to protect tigers from the impacts of tourism and enhance conservation efforts.

Tourism has ushered in a new era of human-wildlife conflict with safari vehicles crowding individual tigers, live location sharing putting tigers at risk, and the development of infrastructure causing habitat loss and fragmentation. Poor tourist behavior was linked to excessive cell phone use, changing the traditional safari from an educational and reflective experience to a high-stakes race for virality.

This ruling comes after years of pressure from conservation groups and tiger advocates, as tourism in protected areas has reached its breaking point. As endangered Bengal tiger populations once again decline, India is stepping in to change the trajectory of tourism before it is too late.

With sweeping new policies passed in November 2025 coming into effect throughout 2026 and into next year, here is everything travelers need to know about the new cell phone ban for tiger safaris in India and what this means for global wildlife tourism.

Would you go on a phone-free safari? What do you think of these new rules? Did you realize that live-location sharing could cause such problems in wildlife tourism?