For this series, we are partnering with longtime friend and journalist Barry Yeoman. Based in Durham, North Carolina, Barry has lived and worked in Louisiana and has written extensively about the complexities of culture, environment, and economy along the state’s coastline. You can learn more about Barry’s work here. 

Together, we crafted the arc of the series and identified the specific people to interview. Barry led the conversations and wrote the text while I focused on the visuals. What a joy to partner with good people.

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Here’s Barry:

We pulled into New Orleans July 18 under the threat of a tropical depression. The storm never quite materialized, but we knew that Gulf Coast forecasts needed to be taken seriously. It was coming up on the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the apocalyptic storm that breached levees, killed more than 1,800 people, and destroyed much of the region’s infrastructure, including bridges and the power grid. In Louisiana, nature doesn’t play.

Katrina made landfall Aug. 29, 2005 and was followed closely by Hurricane Rita. The two storms, combined, eradicated 200 square miles of land. South Louisiana’s tragedy is that it is disappearing: Every 100 minutes, by one estimate, a football field’s worth of wetlands vanishes into the Gulf of Mexico. Those wetlands are essential to life, from the fish that use them as nurseries to the humans whose houses they protect from storm surge. 

You’ll hear more later about the reasons. For now, suffice it to say that the principal culprits are human efforts to engineer the environment. Levees along the Mississippi River protect farms and neighborhoods from flooding but also starve the adjacent wetlands of the sediment they need to rebuild. Canals dug by oil and gas companies funnel saltwater into freshwater marshes, killing the vegetation that holds the land together. Climate change and sea-level rise multiply the threat.

During our nine days in Louisiana, we heard a lot about disappearance. Not only are coastal marshes and barrier islands vanishing, but so is Black-owned farmland. So are the livelihoods of shrimpers and the tradition of eating Gulf seafood. So are local grocery stores, neighborhood music clubs, affordable houses. 

And yet.

“We’ve been here for millennia,” said Rosina Philippe, an elder from the Atakapa-Ishak/Chawasha Tribe. “And happy to say that we’re still here.”

John and I, along with his three interns, traveled a 200-mile stretch from Venice to New Iberia, usually by land and sometimes by boat. We met tribal leaders, conservationists, scientists, a farmer, an attorney, an accordion player, and a fishmonger. Each of them, in their own way, is working to preserve some piece of the landscape. 

For all of Louisiana’s woes, it is also a place of beauty. The bayous and marshes brim with birds, alligators, muskrats, and even feral cattle. The human communities are multicultural, from the jazz and zydeco bands we heard in New Orleans to the Cambodian food truck where we stopped for lunch in Port Sulphur. People are kind. Roots run deep, and also grow fast. In the shadow of abandoned rigs, roseate spoonbills wade.

Over the next eight weeks, you’ll meet 10 Louisianans we interviewed and photographed:

• Chief Devon Parfait, a climate refugee who is using his science background to lead the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw;

• Kristian Bailey, a farmer of natural dyes who works with nature instead of trying to conquer it;

• Ebony Woodruff, an attorney working to stem the loss of Black farmland;

• Alex Kolker, an oceanographer and geologist whose recent discovery offers hope for rebuilding wetlands;

• Prasanta Subudhi, a scientist developing rice that will endure environmental changes;

• Rosina Philippe, whose tribe is developing new ways to flourish even as its land crumbles;

• Darrah Fox Bach, who is helping turn used oyster shells into living shorelines;

• Rashida Ferdinand, who gave up a career as a sculptor to transform her flooded Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood;

• Caitlin Carney, a self-described “Lady Monger” who is working to change her neighbors’ seafood-buying habits; and 

• Bruce Sunpie Barnes, a musician, bandleader, and naturalist who sees Louisiana’s natural and cultural geography as inseparable.

Not everyone agrees on the solutions. The day before our arrival, the state government canceled a $3 billion project that would have opened a gap in the levee to allow sediment-rich river water back into the wetlands. Many environmental groups and scientists supported the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion, calling it the best hope for rebuilding land naturally. Others worried that a freshwater influx would harm the oyster and shrimp harvests, kill dolphins, and flood vulnerable residents. The people we interviewed held strong feelings on both sides, but nonetheless respect one another and often work together toward their common interests. 

Their hard work, and the work of others like them, are key to the survival of the Lower 48’s most fragile coastline and a model for the rest of the country. We hope you’ll stick around for their stories.

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Credits:
Interview and text: Barry Yeoman
Photos: John Noltner
Editing and production: summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin Imai