The Estuary


	Estuaries are areas where rivers meet the sea. The abundance of water, and transition from freshwater to saltwater habitat creates rich opportunity for wildlife and people, too. A stunning diversity of wildlife can inhabit a healthy estuary. Once a target for development like Seattle’s Duwamish Waterway, the Snohomish River Estuary where I live is slowly being reclaimed by nature. The Skagit River Delta and Nisqually Delta are other large, estuaries in the Puget Sound region.

My favorite estuary residents are harbor seals. They hang out at the Everett Waterfront in large numbers, hauling out on log rafts in the sun. They are curious animals who will follow boats and lurk by launches during fishing season in hopes of scoring some fish scrap. In 2009, a seal followed my kayak the entire nine miles from Everett to my house, surfacing at the bow of my boat roughly every 4 minutes, blinking a few times to clear water from its eyes, looking calmly over at me, and then slowly lowering back into the water. Harbor seals feed mostly on non-commercial fish, though it’s hard to convince some fishermen of that.

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