Photograph by Robert Caputo

Toys No More

A child plays on Fourchon Beach in front of a barge sunk along the shore to protect the beach from erosion. Seven such barges bristle with interlocking concrete slabs designed to reduce wave energy, but the results have been a wash. Between 1999—when the jacks were installed—and 2002 the hurricane-wracked beach retreated an average of 45 feet (14 meters) a year. The beach protects nearby Port Fourchon, the supply base for half the offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. More than 600 oil and gas platforms lie within a 40-mile (60-kilometer) radius.

Photograph by Robert Caputo

A Looming Crisis

A cargo vessel appears to swallow St. Louis Cathedral in the heart of New Orleans’ French Quarter as it steams down the Mississippi River. Encircled by levees, most of New Orleans lies below sea level—as much as eight feet (two meters) below in places—due to subsidence and compaction of the underlying soil. In the event of a major hurricane, this “soup bowl” geography could spell disaster for the city, which would have to be pumped out if it flooded.

Photograph by Robert Caputo

Chasing the Louisiana Blue Crab

Crabber T-Roy Borne of Golden Meadow, Louisiana, steers his boat as his father, Roy, and friend Jonathan Guillot help work his crab traps. A commercial crabber since 17, the 35-year-old Borne believes marsh loss has already affected his harvest. “Ten years ago it wasn’t nothing to go out and catch 4,000 pounds [2,000 kilograms] of crabs,” he says. Today he’s lucky to get 1,400 pounds [640 kilograms] a day. “Without habitat for the young crabs to hide in, everything eats them,” Borne says. “Shrimp and all the other seafood are going the same way.”

Photograph by Tyrone Turner

Ready for a Flood

Six-foot (two-meter) diameter pipes swerve past Interstate 10 in New Orleans, one of the city’s main hurricane evacuation routes. The pipes are part of a new 25-million-dollar pump station designed to drain a dip in the highway that has been plagued by flooding for years, often causing massive traffic jams. In 2002 tropical storm Isidore filled the dip with 15 feet (five meters) of water.

Photograph by Tyrone Turner

Water View

Built on sand pumped from the Mississippi River, a subdivision in Meraux, Louisiana, juts into what was once a thriving cypress swamp, now devastated by salt water from a nearby navigation canal. Almost half the state’s population of 4.5 million lives in the coastal zone, where the issue of wetland loss is virtually in everyone’s backyard.