The front line in the fight to save the Louisiana coast could be found an hour’s boat ride offshore from the fishing town of Venice, where the fingerling tributaries of the Mississippi dump into the Gulf of Mexico. About a mile from the turbulent waters of the Gulf Thursday morning, in a waterway called the South Pass, a pair of 30-foot work boats were sidled up behind larger crew boats. Workers in hard hats were passing long lengths of boom, or floating barriers, to the smaller boats, which would then ferry them out to the gulf. The workers did their job quickly and quietly; the only noise at times was from the idling engines and the sound of strong southerly winds whipping through the cane-covered wetlands. The lengths of boom resembled long strips of lifejackets: safety-orange colored, filled with buoyant foam, and covered in orange waterproof material. When a work boat was filled to groaning with boom, it would head out toward the Gulf of Mexico, where workers were laying it out. A number of boom lines were visible around the mouth of the pass: one long line paralleled the south-facing coast of a small island. It looked […]