What Remains

As early as the nineteen-thirties, oystermen in southern Louisiana began to notice the shoreline that they worked was creeping inland. In the years since, with sea levels rising and erosion accelerating, more and more coastal land has been overtaken by water. For Louisiana’s coastal parishes, reduced wetlands mean the areas are more vulnerable to flooding. In the absence of ample wetlands acting as a kind of sponge, future hurricanes of similar magnitudes, travelling unimpeded over the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico, will be even more destructive. And the attrition of the land is of deep personal significance to coastal communities. “For people in south Louisiana, this is an existential issue,” Hanninen said. “These are places that they know, and that their parents knew, and they’re vanishing.” Paavo Hanninen’s documentary looks at a surprisingly simple intervention with the potential to slow runaway land loss along the state’s fragile coast.