Maybe somebody should do something about that

Or maybe this is a sure sign it's too late.

GRAND BAYOU VILLAGE, La. – Flip Tayamen has seen the wetlands of his childhood disintegrate and vanish.

Still, he was stunned to hear that those bays and bayous, with names like Yellow Cotton Bay and Dry Cypress Bayou that offered him nets full of shrimp and shelter from storms, would no longer appear on maps.

"It's really painful," Tayamen, 60, a shrimper in lower Plaquemines Parish, 40 miles south of New Orleans. "You don't know where you're going anymore. You don't know which way to point."

Locals like Tayamen have seen the slow death of Plaquemines' wetlands for years. Over the past several months, cartographers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have made it official, removing 40 place names from official nautical maps. Bays, bayous, rivulets and islands like Fleur Pond, Tom Loor Pass and Skipjack Bay have been erased from federal maps. The reason: They're no longer there.