A Quick and Dirty Guide to Exploring the Mississippi River Delta

Delta Discovery Tours

“ If you're looking to take an educational tour of Louisiana's wetlands, you have come to the right place. Now, time to pick your ideal coastal experience. ”

It is no secret that any trip with Delta Discovery Tours is a unique experience, unlike any other. On any ecotour you choose to take with Captain Richie Blink and the growing Delta Discovery Tours team, you are sure to have a memorable time and leave with a whole new perspective of the Mississippi River Delta. In this rapidly changing landscape, what you saw ten years ago may not be the same as what you see today or what you’ll see ten years from now. This is not your run-of-the-mill swamp tour. Each experience is tailored to your interests, guided by an expert in this area. Just a short drive from New Orleans, these eco-adventures offer an entirely different way to experience the coast. If you're looking to take an educational tour of Louisiana's wetlands, you have come to the right place. Now, time to pick your ideal coastal experience.

Delta Discovery Tours offers a range of excursions. From the most popular Delta Circumnavigation trip to Overnight Beach Camping, there is something for everyone. Here's a quick overview of each trip to help you narrow it down. Not to worry, though; any tour you take is sure to be a worthwhile adventure!

DOLPHIN EXCURSION:

A quick 3-hour trip into the delta, this dolphin excursion is perfect for families with younger children. At $100 per adult and $50 per kid (10 and under), it is the most cost-effective trip offered. This dolphin tour is the only of its kind in the area and visitors are sure to see an abundance of playful pods. Take a break from the hustle and bustle of the French Quarter and escape to a little slice of heaven.

DELTA CIRCLE

This 6-hour trip is the most comprehensive on-the-water ecotour experience in Louisiana. This tour takes visitors to each coastal subtype in the Mississippi River Delta- from the river itself to barrier islands, and the marshes and swamps in between. Visitors explore geologic and human history on this sixty-mile route with a highly experienced tour guide. This totally immersive encounter is ideal for individuals or groups looking to see the stunning wildlife and vast wetlands of this robust, working coast. It is simply a one-of-a-kind adventure, making it our most popular excursion.

BIRDING SAFARI

This 6-hour, 60-mile trip is for the birding enthusiast, avid birdwatcher, and photographer. An experienced guide will transport guests throughout the Mississippi River Delta from the river to the barrier islands, stopping along the way to appreciate the vibrant wetlands that give way to these feathered friends. The delta is home to thousands of wintering waterfowl, wading birds, secretive marsh birds, raptors, shorebirds, and more; making this birding excursion a special experience for any level birder. On this birding tour, guests are likely to see endangered species and even migratory visitors depending on the time of year.

BIRDSFOOT TOUR

This trip is a 60-mile loop for anyone interested in visiting the mouth of the Mississippi. Experience as the water shifts from fresh to salty when the river meets the ocean and check this off your bucket list. This mighty Mississippi River, which begins as a trickle in Minnesota and works its way down to the Gulf draining a whopping 33 states on its way, is a vital piece of Louisiana culture. This 6-hour tour is layered in natural and human history and is perfect for couples or groups.

BEACH CAMPING

This camping excursion is for the avid adventurer, interested in spending time immersed in the wilderness of the Mississippi River Delta. This trek down to the southernmost point in Louisiana gives visitors a unique opportunity to explore uninhabited beaches, see the Milky Way, and unplug on the edge of the continent. This Mississippi River camping trip is weather and water-level dependent, which means visitors need to remain flexible. Nothing about this experience is cookie-cutter. Changes to the route, camping areas, and itinerary happen often to adjust to changing tides, winds, and weather. These trips are run in cooler months from October 1st until March 31st and are perfect for couples or groups looking for an experience of a lifetime.

PADDLER PICK-UP

If you are journeying from the start of the Mississippi to the mouth by paddleboard, then this arrangement is for you. In this feat of human achievement, you dodged weather and barges. You have made it through long stints in the wilderness with just your craft and wits. There is one last detail, how to get back upstream the roughly twenty-five water miles past the nearest road? After paddling for sixty to eighty days, a ride back upstream is a welcomed luxury. Delta Discovery Tours is happy to accommodate. At the end of your paddle adventure, your friendly captain will be there to greet you with a warm smile and a way home.

CUSTOM TRIPS

Submit a trip inquiry to book your next school field trip, artist outing, research exploration, photography adventure, film trip, or fun excursion outside of New Orleans. We are happy to accommodate the perfect trip for artists, students, scientists, photographers, researchers, filmmakers, travelers, and explorers. You must provide your own travel accommodations to Venice, LA.

Still unsure which trip is the perfect fit? Take this quick and easy quiz to help narrow it down!

Avulsion Pass

a·vul·sion

/əˈvəlSHən/

noun

1. MEDICINE

   the action of pulling or tearing away.

   • LAW

     the sudden separation of land from one property and its attachment to another, especially by flooding or a change in the course of a river. The act of pulling or tearing away.

Small boat upbound in Avulsion Pass with a warship in the main channel headed to New Orleans. Photo by James Collier

Avulsion Pass is the newest distributary of the Mississippi River. Beginning as a small unnamed cut near Buras, Louisiana just downstream of the former village of Ostrica, Louisiana on the east bank, this new distributary of the Mississippi River is deep, powerful, and here to stay.

Bound by the laws of physics to get to the sea without delay, the Mississippi River is beginning to shave off 40 miles of river and passes to create a new outlet to the Gulf of Mexico.

Located at 24 miles above Head of Passes, and around 71 miles downstream of the French Quarter, as of this writing in late April 2022, Avulsion Pass is 810’ across and 45’ deep in most places with a sizable canyon carved to -95’ where the cut meets the river. In some places nearer to Quarantine Bay, depths greater than 80’ exist. A former levee was losing around two feet of ground daily while the river was at its peak. While not unprecedented, nothing quite like this has happened this generation in the delta. This new waterway is the avulsion long predicted for the Mississippi River.

Unlike Mardi Gras Pass, with an extensive and complicated pre existing distributary network, Avulsion Pass is a direct shortcut to the Gulf of Mexico. No obstructions currently exist at this location between the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico.

Mile Marker 24, twice replaced by the Coast Guard due to erosion and high currents, now stands just downstream of Avulsion Pass. Photo by James Collier

From observing the crevasses’ development over the years it seems that the cut has had three major stages of development so far.

• Starting as a small crevasse left unchecked, rock and articulated concrete matting revetments failed under constant flow in a similar process to Niagara Falls’ erosional patterns, but underwater and out of sight. Softer clays and sands under the revetment were displaced over time. This happened on the back side of the revetment, out of the main river channel until sufficient depth was reached for what happened next.

• An Island suddenly disappeared over a few weeks. With this bottleneck removed, the capacity to move more water increased significantly. Around this time, in just thirty months or so, the cut grew tremendously in size from the surface perspective.

• Today’s condition: Continued capacity building. Avulsion Pass is not finished. With depths as much as 30’ near the banks of Avulsion Pass, the Mighty Mississippi is allowing more water to pass through daily.

A fine balancing act exists to keep commerce moving. Using a jetty concept developed by James Buchanan Eads, a high velocity is needed to keep channels self scouring for navigation requirements. Ships have grown to dizzying proportions and the draft of the channel has been deepened over the years. Still, the concept of self scouring and dredging the leftovers has remained static since the turn of the last century. Humanity is operating the system in perhaps an 1880s way of thinking. Maybe this new development will allow for some 21st century solutions to managing the lower river?

As published in National Geographic in 1897, shortly after the river levees and jetties were built, these enormous economic benefits would come at a cost:

“…No doubt the great benefit to the present and two or three following generations accruing from a complete system of absolutely protective levees… …far outweighs the disadvantages to future generations from the subsidence of the Gulf delta lands below the level of the sea and their gradual abandonment due to this cause. While it would be generally conceded that the present generation should not be selfish, yet it is safe to say that the development of the delta country during the twentieth century by a fully protective levee system, at whatever cost… …will be so remarkable that the people of the whole United States can well afford, when the time comes, to build a protective levee against the Gulf waters.”

Corthell, E. L. “Delta of the Mississippi River.” National Geographic. Dec. 1897: 351-354.

It’s now time to act. A tremendous opportunity is present for nature to be leveraged. In the past, humanity has not been the best at taking care of the delta. The delta has had declining landmass over the last century. Somewhere on the order of 2000 square miles of land have been lost to the gulf due to short sighted management techniques dialed narrowly on certainty of commerce. Avulsion Pass can create a new massive subdelta.

I worry that the Corps gets to work with its business-as-usual way of throwing money and rocks at the new development and misses an opportunity to work with the community on a solution that helps to establish a new delta in the area. This would be less expensive and have greater success. Cubits Gap, The Venice Jump, Garden Island Bay, are all places that have big sub-deltas built since european arrival. That massive land growth can be replicated at Avulsion Pass.

Wells et al., 1983

Innovative ideas like using the intersection of Avulsion Pass and the Mississippi River as a new hopper dredge disposal area would save the Corps money and take sediment out of the system before it must be handled again in the Bird’s Foot Delta. We need not have limits on our imagination when thinking about how to keep the main trunk of the river in place for certainty of navigation and wetland creation. Those two goals should be of equal importance. In an age where cumulative environmental degradation is impacting our lives and commerce, opportunities to harness Avulsion Pass must be taken. This will require the Corps to be quick on their feet, can they rise to the occasion? Or will Avulsion Pass be the undoing of one of the world’s great deltas?

Rock repair at a new cut along Southwest Pass. This concept, but using sediment three miles out where the flow is greatly reduced could help to usher a new delta into existence.

The last time something like this happened it was caught relatively quickly as it was just a few miles from the Southwest Pass pilot station. An arc of rock had to be placed on the backside of a new cut as the water was too deep and swift at the river. Lessons can be taken from that action. Instead of rock, humanity can use sediment to build mouth bars, urging along the development of a new delta. Those actions would slow the flow of water in a similar manner to natural delta formation pairing experts in fluvial geomorphology and local expertise. Avulsion Pass is too deep and too swift for any economical repairs where it meets the river. Even if rock repairs were attempted it would need to be quite far from where the pass enters into Quarantine Bay, possibly 500 yards into the bay at minimum.

One thing is certain, at this point solutions will need to be grand. Humanity and the federal government can throw two thousand barge loads of rock the size of Volkswagens into this hole in the river - an underwater rockpile that will require half a mountain of material that only serves one purpose, or we can take our collective breath and develop a solution between community and government that guides nature to build a grand subdelta while keeping shipping moving. Truth be told, it may be the only thing that we can do within reason.

-Richie

Do It Yourself Swamp

Blink planting cypress in 2011

Taking Stock

Christmas Eve 2009, I was standing in the wheelhouse of the offshore crew boat I was running for an oil & gas company. It was raining and cold, my family was out of town and I was done for the night. The lights from the harbor lit up the raindrops. Not a bad time to contemplate one’s fate.

I knew I loved working on the water, but something was missing. What I was doing wasn’t good for my soul. I knew that at the end of my journey on this earth I wanted to leave the place better than I found it. I needed more from life.

Lack of Agency

On duty, I’d travel the Mississippi River from the port in Venice, Louisiana to oil fields in the delta and Gulf of Mexico, sometimes as many as five times a day. I’d bring men and equipment to and from platforms to a central facility at the mouth of Pass a Loutre. I was working a seven day rotation and the far-flung part of the delta. I was spending literally half of my time and life watching the delta fall apart right in front of me. It was all a bit much.

Coastal restoration in Louisiana has went from non-existent twenty years ago to centralized at the state and federal level just after Hurricane Katrina. Planning efforts to restore the coast had always seemed to leave out small towns with little political power, yet a never ending cast of surveyors and scientists would come through. I often thought, “if only these folks would bring a boat load of trees with them every time they come.”

Plaquemines Cypress Salvation Project at Pilottown, Louisiana

Shaking Branches

Sometimes you just have to start. I didn’t have equipment, experience, or help. After a week at the local library I was able to organize a solid project where 1400 trees were planted in a morning. Everyone who I talked to was eager to help. The Crescent River Port Pilots brought us down in their pilot boats, the local 4H chapter came with a great group of volunteers, local land owners, especially Mr. Earl Armstrong and Albertine Kimble, helped to point me in the right direction, the Louisiana State Agriculture and Forestry Department donated some left over trees. Today, some of the trees are thirty feet tall.

Blink with seedlings in his boat, Trenasse

Getting a project like that done was important to feeling any control over what was happening to the coast. Right away, I began working to get more trees in the ground and was able to partner with a local landowner to plant five thousand bald cypress. That project took twenty-eight working days, I even bought a boat to do the job, Trenasse.

In later years, I’d be sure to order three to five thousand trees annually. I’d plant them for folks at their homes inside the levees and plant the rest in the delta wherever I thought they should be. I learned alot about soil salinity, defenses for the young saplings, and what parts of the delta have conditions for successful tree growth. I picked up on how to retain islands and enhance certain parts of the delta. The work kept me in good shape mentally and physically and was a great way to deepen my understanding of how the Mississippi River Delta works.

Cypress ready for pick up in Hammond, Louisiana

Later on during the Governor Jindal years, the State of Louisiana sold off its tree nurseries and equipment. It was growing 40 million pine trees annually for the robust lumber industry in the northern part of the state. Only 300,000 bald cypress were cultivated though. I had to pivot. It was clear to me that we needed to prioritize and scale up wetland restoration. I still believe it.

We over-engineer some projects and we miss opportunities to tap local traditional ecological knowledge and put people to work. Prioritizing green infrastructure needs to be a top goal of state and federal policymakers. We can achieve many goals; habitat restoration, give people an economic footing, knock down storm surge, sink carbon, the list goes on. All this by doing some of the simplest work.

Bald cypress seedling planted near Venice, Louisiana

DIY Forest

While it took lots of labor, and raised my water bills, I started growing my own bald cypress in my backyard. Some trees near Venice, Louisiana were starting to die from salt water intrusion as the protective wetland buffer was lost. I noticed that some trees were able to hang on. Cypress, despite being a tree associated with freshwater swamps, had barnacles growing on them. Theorizing that this seed stock may be more salt water tolerant I began to collect seeds from those trees. I’d pull the flat bottomed mud boat under the trees and toss down as many seeds as possible.

An old man who lived in a cabin outside Venice shared how to cure the seeds and drastically increase the germination rate. Using a plastic coffee container and a spot in the back of his fridge he showed me how to simulate flooded winter conditions. Before long, I had bald cypress coming up like grass in plastic kiddie pools.

Cypress seed collection

Future Growth

I still plant trees from time to time. While I’ve switched to black willow for sheer numbers and speed of growth, cypress, the wood eternal, has a spot in my heart. Sea level rise projections were a big reason for the change too. When I began planting the state was planning for around nine tenths of a foot of sea level rise over fifty years. Now those projections are around three feet for the same time period. Experts say that may be conservative. Willow grow straight from cuttings, I still wanted to plant but knew my initial time investment would need to shift.

Get Involved

If you’re interested in participating in a tree planting, reach out. I still go into the delta to plant thousands annually, mostly with folks looking to protect their community.

The way it feels to see, touch, and climb trees many times my own height planted with my own hands is hard to contextualize. It’s nice to have some agency now.

-Richie