Today, Cameron fishermen who fish Southwest Louisiana’s Gulf Coast showed the destruction of coastal areas critical to the region’s environment, economy, and way of life. Piloted and guided by veteran fisherman, shrimpers, and other local residents who earn their living on these endangered waters, the group showed the oil and gas industry’s ongoing expansion in the region not visible from land.

What the fishermen showed: imposing gas export terminals rising above the coast, bulldozed beaches, and coastal wetlands being backfilled and flattened to make way for yet even more terminals. The Port of Cameron once produced the most seafood in the United States, but the gas export industry’s takeover of Southwest Louisiana is making the fishermen’s way of life untenable. The sheer magnitude of Cameron Parish’s three existing terminals gave all in attendance a clear view of what is in store for other tracts of land along Cameron Parish’s fragile coastline and the local seafood industry if the industry’s expansion continues.

Currently, the oil and gas industry has plans to build or expand 12 more gas export terminals, each of which could reach the size of a football stadium and consume vast amounts of land, including coastal wetlands and other sensitive areas. Terminals like these are prone to accidents and operational problems, which result in more toxic pollution and have caused at least one explosion in Freeport, TX.

Beyond the shocking visuals, the human stories were equally harrowing.

“I don’t think (the Cameron shrimping industry) can last much longer, maybe a year or two if you’re lucky,” said “Rooster” Dyson, a fisherman and shrimper who volunteered his commercial fishing vessel to give journalists a first-person account of the industry’s rapid expansion. “If something doesn’t change…I mean, it’s all about the plants and nothing about the shrimping industry.”

Dyson detailed how shrimpers are being squeezed out of their historical fishing grounds. “When the shrimp show up, they’re moving those ships and you can’t be anywhere in the way…They want us to be two miles from these ships when they come into the ship channel. Well, I’d have to leave my dock to be two miles away from them.”

Venture Global, the gas export company that operates Calcasieu Pass, closed off a local jetty that was used both recreationally and for fishing. The jetty was rebuilt in 2009 after Hurricane Rita, only to be made inaccessible ten years later by Venture Global’s construction of Calcasieu Pass.

Another local shrimper, Travis Dardar, was not alone in his concerns for the future of the region and its local industries.

“It destroyed our lives…When I moved here it was beautiful…By 8:30, 9:00 in the morning we were already at the bank waiting to cash our check, our day was made, that early in the morning. Slowly and surely it went away…First they took the dredge away, then they took the docks away. Then the shrimping, the price went down, everything declined,” said Dardar. You can hear more of Dardar’s speech here.

Long-time local shrimper Adley “Leo” Dyson pointed out the inequity of all the profits being made in Cameron compared to the compensation being paid to those being forced to move from their homes. “It’s big money. And it would not hurt them to help these people.”