August 15, 2022 — While Lance Nacio’s father worked in the oil and gas industry, he also hunted and fished with his son, teaching him to live off of Louisiana’s natural resources, like crabs, shrimp, fish and oysters. Today, Nacio is the owner of Anna Marie Seafood, and he’s teaching his own son and nephew the tools passed down from his father. Nacio, who is part Native American and Filipino, has been a full-time shrimper since 1987, and his family captains the three boats of his business.

“A lot of fishermen on the coast are Native Americans,” Nacio says. “A lot of these fishermen who are on the coast have culture and history that ties them to their industries.”

Fishing and the seafood industry are closely tied to Louisiana identity, providing not only a livelihood but a cultural interconnection between those in coastal communities. But that culture and history are in danger as the effects of climate change threaten to swallow them whole.

Researchers and fishers like Nacio are working toward solutions to climate challenges while finding a way to adapt to climate change. Not only are they working to preserve the fisheries industry, but the culture and community that makes up their way of life.

“It’s not just the fishermen and their families themselves, but a lot of these small coastal communities throughout South Louisiana have a large part of their economy wrapped up in the fishing community. It’s a major blow to the whole community,” says Patrick Banks, assistant secretary at the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

Coastal Louisiana isn’t just the place where the region’s native populations, Cajun people, communities formed by freed Black people and more recently Vietnamese and Filipino communities live. The land and water are also integral parts of their lives, their cultures and their traditions.

So, too, are the ways in which they interact with the land and waters of south Louisiana. Fishing and hunting are interwoven into their lives and cultures, as much a way for them to earn a living and feed their families as they are sacred traditions.

But thanks to climate change, the land that holds the sacred traditions of their culture is disappearing before their eyes.

Climate change is accelerating land loss across south Louisiana — the state, today, is losing about a football field’s amount of land every 100 minutes — and since 1950, the sea level has risen by 24 inches near Grand Isle. Experts predict that 30 years from now, sea levels along south Louisiana could be 1.3 feet higher.

At the same time, climate change is supercharging hurricanes in the Gulf. The 2021 hurricane season was the third most active on record — following the first most active season in 2020. Approaching the height of this year’s hurricane season, communities in Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes are still struggling to recover from Hurricane Ida.

In the past, the Pointe-au-Chien and Isle de Jean Charles communities used to be able to walk or go by horseback to the island, Theresa Dardar points out. Dardar is a tribal member of the Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe and president of The Lowlander Center. Today, the water in the community creeps onto roadways and closer to homes as more than 21,000 acres of the island have disappeared.

However, due to land loss, the Isle de Jean Charles Indigenous community is being forced to move inland, relocating and developing a new isle about 40 miles north. The move not only affects Indigenous communities’ culture and source of income but also their way of life.

“We fish to make a living, but it’s also our diet. That’s important because if you have to move people more inland and they no longer are fishing, their whole diet changes,” Dardar says. The state is making “a pond or a little bayou for the community they’re building for the island, but it will never be the same.”

Dardar adds, “Coastal people don’t want to move. They want to stay where they are. The only community that has been forced to move is our neighbors in Isle de Jean Charles so far.”

The Pointe-au-Chien area is also affected by the land loss as the bayou is a lot wider than before and the high tide has caused erosion.

“Culture and our roots are deep here, and it’s within the island. We’ve been adapting and our plan is to stay in place. But when you have to move, you lose some of your cultures and you lose where your ancestors are,” Dardar says.

Dardar says the Pointe-au-Chien community’s cemeteries and mounds are threatened by climate change impacts. Land loss has caused the community to have to travel by boat to visit their cemeteries outside of their home now. The Pointe-au-Chien community has used shells to try to protect the mounds from washing away in their work with the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana.

“In 1974 with Hurricane Carmen, we had water come into our yard but not into our home,” Dardar says. “(Years later) we were flooded into our home, but the water didn’t go all the way up the bayou. Hurricane Ida almost wiped away our community with only 12 homes being livable in our community after Ida.”

Read the full article at Gambit