Over the last 90 years, Louisiana has lost some 2,000 square miles of coastline owing to a complex set of factors that includes climate change. In What Remains, the US filmmaker Pavoo Hanninen captures a simple yet effective effort to preserve and restore the coast. With striking cinematography and a rustic string score, Hanninen traces the path of an oyster caught in Barataria Bay from a fishing boat to a local restaurant and, ultimately, the return of its shell to the coast through the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana’s oyster shell recycling programme. There, newly restored oyster reefs protect the shoreline from erosion and support complex ecosystems and sustainable fisheries. The resulting short documentary is a rich portrait of a practice that’s not just sustainable, but restorative.
How oyster cultivation protects Louisiana’s fragile coastline
videoFood and drink
The best way to eat an oyster is the way you like it at the moment you crave it
5 minutes
videoLove and friendship
Fighting the tide: a Louisiana bayou couple’s 70 bittersweet years of marriage
13 minutes
videoBiotechnology
It’s our responsibility to engineer corals that can weather the world we’ve created
11 minutes
videoEcology and environmental sciences
The grassroots project that’s restoring an endangered Hawaiian ecosystem
22 minutes
videoGender
Defying social pressure, a woman commits herself to lobster fishing and the sea
11 minutes
videoEcology and environmental sciences
Watch as wanderlust propels mussels on epic journeys worthy of a Pixar movie
5 minutes
videoFamily life
For Dulce, the rite of passage of learning to swim might soon be her means of survival
11 minutes
videoEarth science and climate
A biologist on the sorrows of documenting the Great Salt Lake’s collapse
6 minutes
videoEcology and environmental sciences
How beautiful bioluminescent bacteria can expose invisible water pollution
3 minutes