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BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - For some tourists, this delta boat tour provides a chance to see where the Mississippi River ends as it drains one of the world’s larger watersheds.

“It’s part of 32 states, two Canadian provinces,” said Richie Blink.

Blink operates Delta Discovery Tours. He mixes science and history into a lesson on the Mississippi River Delta, its past and its future.

“So down here, closer to the coast,” said Blink.

First there’s a slideshow that explains the forces at work, both natural and manmade.

“The delta’s very much like a living being that’s sort of been a bit of a straight jacket, or almost like a jail cell today from all the human activity,” Blink continued.

The tour begins on the west side of the river, an area where fishing communities and industries are protected by levees, but where historic bayou and wetlands have dissolved into open bays. Rocks line a shoreline in an effort to slow erosion, and black mangrove trees also help.

“I would describe it as a three dimensional biological barrier that’s gonna knock down storm surge. We can’t do everything with levees and concrete here” said Blink.

There have always been changes to the River Delta as it slowly shifts back and forth across Louisiana’s coastline.

“Say it would take 2000 years for one of these old deltas to go away. The humans have sped that up into just a little bit more than a century, you know, between the canal digging levee building, the oil and gas activity that we’ve had here. Louisiana’s economy hasn’t been very kind to the coast,” Blink said.

But this is a tale of two deltas, the vanishing wetlands on the west side of the river, and a growing delta across the Mississippi to the east. Here a century old river levee has crumbled and washed away. Sediment rich water from the Mississippi surges to the east through Neptune Pass.

“This area started converting over a freshwater marsh. There’s much more biodiversity here now,” said Blink.

The shallow freshwater marsh attracts a variety of birds and other wildlife, including alligators. Thousands of willow trees have been planted to help hold the newly formed land together. Nicole Pezold Hancock, who’s originally from New Orleans, but lives in New Jersey, made her first trip into the River Delta.

“The thing that really surprised me was how quickly the open water can grow land. How the wetlands can heal themselves,” said Hancock.

But a widening breach creates other problems, less water in the river for large ships, and the risk of the river changing course. Rocks have been placed below the surface to slow the flow. With all that, you know, all that you’ve seen and observed about the Mississippi River Delta, what do you see as its future?

“The river’s always gonna end somewhere, and it’s up to the humans to decide how far inland we’re gonna let it roll,” Blink said.

This tour shows the forces at work, the levees and land loss, and the potential for creating new land along a river that has shaped this delta for thousands of years.

More information on the Delta Discovery Tour and other outdoor adventures can be found on Heart of Louisiana’s website.

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