Louisiana is home to the fastest-disappearing land mass in the US, stretching from Plaquemines and Lafourche parishes as far north as Point Coupee and home to over 600,000 people.

The Louisiana coast has been experiencing this crisis for the better part of the last century and likely longer than that. Between 1932 and 2016, Louisiana lost 2,006 square miles of its coast, an area equivalent to more than 10 times the size of New Orleans, according to a 2016 study produced by the U.S. Geological Survey.

“A whole lot can be lost without it being noticed; that way, people don’t get alarmed,” says Gary LaFleur, a biology professor at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux.