Controlling the Mississippi by Emma Reid On a dry day, the Lower Mississippi River normally expels more than 600,000 cubic feet of water per second into the Gulf of Mexico. During rainy seasons, that can increase to over one million cubic feet per second. Since the early 1900’s, the Corps of Engineers has been…
I-49 by Mike Maher So they’re not done with I-49, and I tell ya, it’ll be a pretty nice time once they got that sucker done. I was cruising down from Arkansas the other day, and bam! Suddenly I’m getting routed around the gosh darn countryside. Sure, lovely country, don’t got a bad thing to say about it, but I’ll tell ya I was trying to get back to Louisiana and I sure woulda loved a dang interstate. So ya putz around for a good hour, hour and a half until ya make it down to where the 49 starts up again and boy, I will tell you, open road, sunshine, heck I even had the window rolled down a bit. Smoked a cigarette, sure, that type of thing. So I get down to the end of the 49 where…
The Spillway by Mike Maher The spillways been open for about a week, which gives a lil look at how much water the Mississippi carries as ya drive west on I-10 towards Manchac. It’s pretty interesting I think so the other day I was taking some folks out to Manchac for an 11:30am tour. Actually, wait no, I think it was the 2:00pm tour. Anyway yeah I was taking them out for the 2:00pm tour, and someone asked about the spillway. So I got to talking about it, ya know, the history, how much water it moves, the importance of it, this kinda thing. And ya know, I’m driving so I’m watching where I’m going, we pride ourselves on safety. So I can’t see the folks in the back, I assume they’re totally enthralled by the engineering marvel and the implications for fisheries in the…
The darned Water Hyacinth by Mike Maher A lotta folks’ll ask me what other swamps they should check out in the New Orleans area. An easy choice is Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve. They got a lotta nice walking trails, through a Cypress-Tupelo swamp, a palmetto forest, along a bayou, etc. I…
Deep Thought on Mardi Gras by Mike Maher Sure, I like Mardi Gras. Ya know, I’m not the biggest party guy out there but it’s a darn good time. Folks get to bounce around, do as they please, have a drink, sure ya have a couple drinks here and there. Get into a…
What’s up with the traffic on Saint Claude?! by Mike Maher I don’t drive all that much, my car was totaled in the August floods. Sometimes I borrow a friends car if I need one. Right now I’m sorta car-sitting my roommates SUV. It’s handy, I enjoy…
Cold by Mike Maher My house doesn’t have heat. It’s very cold in here. I have a couple of space heaters, but one doesn’t really work. I don’t have a car and the pipes froze in my bathroom. My best bet is to wash dishes with the warm water that works in the kitchen….
Brumation by Mike Maher I’m not even gunna get into what alligators do in the winter. Have you thought about what humans do in New Orleans to tolerate the cold? I may not even get into that. North Face jackets and way too many layers. The bayou changes around the year. The winter isn’t any…
Aliens in the Swamp! by Emma Reid Just kidding… there are no aliens, but we are going to start off the first blog about weird swamp stuff with something extra weird… and cool! After the water levels recede in the swamp you may see these gooey globs that you may think look like an alien pod or maybe a jelly-like mass of fish eggs. Think not! These are called Bryozoan Colonies (Pectinatella Magnifica), which essentially means “moss animals.” They are microscopic aquatic invertebrates that live in colonies and can actually be found in many different freshwater ecosystems around the world. The colonies of microscopic zooids take on weird jelly shapes and are usually attached to a submerged structure such as a rock or submerged branch. If you were to touch them they would feel like a washed up jellyfish, but…
Tree friend artwork by Ray Swaney
It would be entirely possible to drive into Houston, spend the day there, even stay in a hotel downtown and leave the next day without noticing one of the largest disasters in American history had just happened. What happened in Houston is not photogenic, but somehow the devastation is nearly total. Your friends and family…
Supporting our Shorebirds by Emma Reid This week, some of our kayak guides will head down south to Grand Isle and other surrounding barrier islands to help respond to impacts on the Louisiana’s shorebird population after Tropical Storm Cindy. The storm wrecked nests of shorebirds, and many recently hatched chicks drowned because they were…