Grand Isle

 We have now visited a series of locations, including Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge (western LA); Cameron, Vermilion Bay, Holly Beach, Chenier au Tigre, Wax Lake and the Atchafalaya/Wax Lake outlet and its impressive mud flats and growing accretion, as well as the rich plant life there; Trinity Island, LUMCON and the surrounding marshes, and in early 2013, Grand Isle, the only (long term) inhabited barrier island in Louisiana. Grand Isle has a front side exposed to the open Gulf of Mexico, with significant sand dunes and dune plants such as bitter panicum and sea oats helping anchor and even accrete sand.

 This island is inhabited and the variety of structures is striking.

 The elevated roadway leading to Grand Isle allows views of some of the houses and the working coast.

 Various protection measured include dune reworking and rock breakwaters to reduce the impact of wave energy on the sand part of the island.

In among all this amazing natural beauty, the Louisiana coast is a true working coast, with oil rigs, ships, derricks, tugboats, crabbers, shrimpers and even oystermen working the renewable and nonrenewables of the coast.  Which brings us to one of our themes: we wish to nurture and even grow components of the coast, including human habitation and infrastructure, and to do it in sustainable and ideally growing (both metaphorically and literally) ways.  Quite a challenge, but with all the creativity we have seen, it seems a real possibility.