Wetlands Art Project

barriers-postgustav- PDF

Read More at HoumaToday.com

By Jeremy Alford
Capitol Correspondent

Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 11:23 a.m.

Along Bayou Lafourche, Cajun communities watched their land and livelihood sink into salt waters.

Watch the video

A listserv I belong to (as I’m sure some others here do as well) recently posted some aerial flyover photographs of the Louisiana barrier islands, from Grand Isle across all the ones we visited all the way to Raccoon Island.  Be prepared!  The photo of Wine Island is hard to interpret upon first viewing, and overwhelmingly depressing once you recognize what it is you’re looking at.  Still, one can clearly see that much of the trash we were all bummed over is now gone somewhere else.  Surely new trash will come, but just because the beaches are (at least temporarily) now mostly free of man-made debris, I propose that we all skip out of work or school and take another trip out there!  :)  What about it, Gary?  [were you in St. Tammany parish recently?].

Michael (maddog)

Post Hurricane Gustav aerial photographs of Grand Isle, Louisiana, are
available for viewing and downloading from the USGS National Wetlands
Research Center website. To read the Hurricane Gustav Update, September 4, 2008, click on http://www.nwrc.usgs.gov/index.html. Photographs of the Chandeleur Islands and adjacent areas will be posted in the near future as they become available. To go directly to the Grand Isle photos,
click on: http://www.nwrc.usgs.gov/hurricane/gustav/aerial_photos.htm.

(August 14, 2008) A global study led by VIMS Professor Robert Diaz shows that the number of “dead zones”—areas of seafloor with too little oxygen for most marine life—has increased by a third between 1995 and 2007.

Read More on:

VIRGINIA INSTITUTE FOT MARINE STUDIES website:

http://www.vims.edu/deadzone/index.html

(more…)

I hope that any momentum gained will not be so forceful as to yet again derail my creative engines and slam-crash me right into one of those “Passin’ graves that have no name, freight yards full of old black men” that Arlo Guthrie et al. sing about. I’m hoping not. I’m betting on it.

My mood on our trip was less than all it could have been - I apologize for that. My heart and soul were in pain, real and palpable pain, over the condition of my home.  It really took the heart-rending and obviously heartfelt sentiments of Ernie (thank you, buddy - I think you still owe me lunch, huh?  …or is it the other way ’round? …can’t seem to remember), and the playful anticipation and “unorthodox” means of approaching their tasks by (the good) Daniel, Katy, and Amanda to snap me out of my… melancholia? (sounds like a disease women might get in a Walker Percy novel, doesn’t it?)  I cannot for the life of me imagine where that photo of the Marvelous Buttocks went… but it will forever be etched in my mind.

So now I realize that all is not lost. Plenty may be well and truly fucked, but not necessarily irredeemable.
Some of these pictures were not taken on our trip… okay I’m a liar. Many of these photos might not have been taken exactly where we were… okay I apparently am a compulsive liar. NONE of these photos came from anywhere near where we spent a glorious week together exploring the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary System. In fact, they came from the Lake Pontchartrain Estuary. We have problems of our own here, but we have astonishing beauty here too: just like we did at LUMCON (wish I could’ve seen the baby terrapins hatch out… dang!).

First I start with (at least 1/2) the reason I do all this. My son (and daughter) have asked me if they could swim in some of the creeks of the Northshore. I have to be aware of rainfall rates, Escherichia coli (intestinal bacteria from warm-blooded animals) counts, runoff estimates…. I shouldn’t have to be. I should be able to say “sure!, dive in!” and let them appreciate the spring fed creeks like I did as a child. This makes me very sad. So now I do things about it.

This is my son Galen Greene organizing the canoes for a Math/Science Partnership Grant I was working on. It was mostly 5th - 8th grade teachers, learning about science. This was a canoe trip down Cane Bayou to Lake Pontchartrain. Big Branch National Wildlife Refuge, Big Branch, LA.

He is 1/2 my raison d’etre.  Kelby, here, is the other 1/2.  How could I not work my ass off to better their world?  …or at least try?

Surely I’ll be grinning like a fool at any moment, right?

Baldcypress Leaves… these ironically belong to our Louisiana State Tree. They are being cut down and used for garden mulch. Can you imagine a tree capable of living over 2000 years being used as GARDEN MULCH?!?

Let’s have a little respect here, people. Dammit.

I often see this plant in the wild, laden with berries and immediately I identify it as Callicarpa americana , the America Beauty Berry. Well… landscaping my yard with as much native vegetation as I can, I find what I think is Roughleaf Dogwood (in my defense, it was reeal tiny) and plant it where I’d like a shrub or small tree. Damned if the flowers didn’t come out at the wrong part of the stem and then these ridiculous purple berries appear! So what if scientists can misidentify a specimen or two - The REAL QUESTION is: Can I Make It Fit Into My Anally Retentive Landscape Plan, or not? The answer turns out to be…

YES! The birds like it! The bees like it! It can be trimmed into a neat shrubby form! Deer will wander through my suburban development and open my gate all for the sake of enjoying this succulent delight! I’m so happy! Providence! Er… well, Evolutionary Providence!

The ram’s horn snail ‘happily’ grazes, probably upon the algae growing on this exotic, damned, introduced-from-South-America fern called Salvinia.

Then again, something might eat the snail (and the parasites it almost undoubtedly contains).

Well. No answers here. Just philosophy. You work it out.

Did you know that the humble palmetto can live to be as old as 150 years of age?

There are still problems in the Lake Pontchartrain Basin, just as there are all across Louisiana. These are remnants of live oaks. They once were on a natural levee or ridge. They now stand (or lean, or fall) in water properly categorized as brackish.

The same plight is befalling a large number of baldcypress trees as well. The next photo illustrates this.

Yes, our knees hurt.

These are my friends. Forever.

They may not be the same people year after year, but they come and spend their spring and winter breaks helping me plant thousands of baldcypress saplings. Saplings very likely to succumb to saltwater intrusion or be eaten by nutria.

Why bother? Good question. We’ve put over 100,000 trees into the marsh over the years because when the conditions do improve, we’ll be there. And we’ll be ready.

The brown pelican, Louisiana’s State Bird. Pretty much went extinct because of DDT bioaccumulation in the food chain. The pesticide upset the calcium metabolism of this wonderful bird and caused it to produce very thin egg shells. Since it breeds on small islands of oyster shells (or even in small shrubs), any cracks in the eggs allowed bacteria to invade and destroy the developing embryos.

Florida was happy to give us a small breeding population and I’m happy to say that our state bird is again live and well… assuming we don’t do too many more stupid things.

The thing is…

no matter what we do, what we think, how we act, we’re just humans full of human nonsense.

Our actions may be noble. They may be even commendable.

When you consider something like this tree cricket for too long, one begins to really wonder if all our

posturing is to save the world, or to save our face.

I’m certainly no philosopher, but it seems to me that we do many, many things in the name of… well, whatever the current cause may be. Some of us are worker bees in the cause, some are queens - many do the work; a few get the “glory” and maybe the project works out well for all. Let us hope so. For now, I think I’m going to zoom in on this tree cricket and marvel at his beauty and functionality. Maybe this takes me full circle and allows me to combine my raison d’etre with the stunning beauty of the cricket. I’d like to think so.

maddog (keep it cool, y’all)

2007, Narated by Garland Robinette

The America’s Energy Coast initiative brings together leaders of academia, industry, conservation, government and non-profit agencies to educate the public about the necessary co-existence of energy and ecology to sustain America’s Energy Coast.

America’s Energy Coast includes the Gulf Coast energy-producing states: Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

For more information, visit www.americasenergycoast.com

Driving down the highway 56 South, one does not expect to see a facility of this magnitude. W. J. DeFelice Marine Center- LUMCON raises from the marsh and above the fishing camps with it’s observation tower like a secret lair of some super villain from Bond movies. It’s not hard to imagine the confusion of local and visiting fishermen during the construction in the ’80s

“The Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON) was formed in 1979 to coordinate and stimulate Louisiana’s activities in marine research and education. LUMCON provides coastal laboratory facilities to Louisiana universities, and conducts research and educational programs in the marine sciences.”

And in addition to this important role, LUMCON facility also happens to have a small darkroom which is used very intensely for 6 days a year by the coastal landscape photographers…

There exists in Louisiana, and by association in our Coastal Landscape Photography course, a curious and ubiquitous dichotomy. We are eighteen people living, eating, breathing coastal Louisiana and its complex environmental issues for, technically, one week. We reside comfortably at LUMCON for the week and take rather intense daily photographic field trips to document this dynamic estuary from its barrier islands and all points between. Louisiana’s estuarine system can certainly boast having among the most recently created land in North America, yet it is dying of decay even as we walk its beaches. It is a region unprecedented in its biological diversity, its productivity and economic importance… yet it is a region unknown to many, disdained and maligned by others, mistreated and abused by the very corporations who siphon away its wealth.

The barnacles to the left are, somehow, a fitting example of what I’m trying to say: they are a cool crustacean, gregarious and social (at least to the extent that they cluster together); an animal for whom lying around on one’s back and eating with one’s feet is a matter of course and reproduction is an all-or-nothing random get-together near the beach (a sort of Spring Break with faulty birth control, perhaps). How could life get any better, I ask you? Well, these particular barnacles are dead. Washed up onto a beach rapidly becoming devoid of plants… in fact, becoming devoid of much of the life that sustains the continued growth of these wetlands. This contrast between abundance and sterility, between vibrant life and slow decomposition is literally all around us.

There is probably little need to delve into the litany of causes for this environmental disaster, you can look no farther than the sites listed on the Blogroll for more information… good information… very much worth looking into. Go ahead and look. Really.

But the dichotomy! That’s what I really wish to address, both textually and photographically, so we’ll begin by visiting the birth canal and metaphorically allowing ourselves to be squirted out onto this wonderful landscape with a newborn sense of childlike wonder.

We visit a fort… a dying, decaying old structure located on a barrier island that appears to have been given up on by the powers-that-be (a no-win situation for sure, right?) But in the midst of the fort’s decay, there is new life, both symbolically and literally.

Gaillardia sp. wave abundantly in the breeze and baby spadefish (Chaetodipterus faber) browse among the seagrasses.

Oddities on Port Fourchon Beach, Louisiana seem to be the norm.  There are so many objects that are (dis)placed on the beach from the gulf.   Some items apparently have been washed away from the very same beach they return to; but others I suspect come from rigs or boats.   Would this explain all of the light bulbs I’ve been finding?  And what about the hard hats?  And what about Andy the CPR dummy head? 

 More and more folks are coming to camp out at the entrance to the beach (which is presently closed to vehicular traffic.)   This generally leads to more debris left on the beach… some of it eventually is pulled out into the ocean and then redeposited further down.  I see lots of shoes for instance… but haven’t found a matching pair yet.