Estuaries

Estuaries
Where Rivers Meet the Sea

Rivers connect to ocean
 Estuaries are where

the nutrient outflow of a
river meets the ocean.
 Estuaries are incredibly
productive – meaning
lots of producers!!
 The cloudy water here
in Galveston bay is
NOT dirt!!!
 It is PRODUCERS
Origins And Types of Estuaries
 Estuaries are semi-enclosed areas where
fresh water and seawater meet and mix
 They therefore represent a close
interaction between land and sea
 Estuaries are among the most productive
environments on earth.
 Estuaries also rank among the
environments most affected by humans
 Estuaries are scattered along the shores
of all the oceans and vary widely in origin,
type, and size
 They may be called lagoons, sloughs, or
bays – such as Florida Bay
 Some oceanographers classify enclosed
seas with restricted circulation, such as
the Baltic and Black seas, as estuaries
 Many estuaries were formed when sea level
rose because of the melting of ice at the end of
the last ice age (18,000 years ago)
 The sea invaded lowlands and river mouths in
the process
 These estuaries are called drowned river
valleys or coastal plain estuaries
 They are the most common type of estuary
 Another type of estuary is the bar built estuary
 The accumilation of sediments along the coast builds
up sand bars and barrier islands (found along coasts
in the Gulf of Mexico)
 Other estuaries, such as San Francisco Bay in
California, were created not because sea level
rose but because the land sank – tectonic
estuaries
 Fjords are estuaries where retreating glaciers
cut deep, often spectacular, valleys alond the
coast. The valleys were partially submerged
when sea level rose, and rivers flowed into them
estuaries
Physical Characteristics of
Estuaries
 Influenced by the tides and mixing of fresh
and salt water, estuaries have a unique
combination of physical and chemical
characteristics
 These factors govern the lives of the
organisms that live there.
Estuaries
 The salinity of estuaries fluctuates
dramatically both from place to place and
from time to time
 Salinity varies with depth as well
 Salt water being more dense sinks to the
bottom and creates salt wedges
 Salt wedges move back and forth with the
daily tides
Salt Wedge
Estuaries
 In regions of little freshwater runoff and
high evaporation the salinity of the water
increases
 The average salinity for some locations
like this – Laguna Madre, Texas coast – is
over 50% in some areas, and may reach
100% in dry spells. These high salinity
estuaries are called negative estuaries
Living in Estuaries
Coping with Salinity Fluctuations
 Living in an estuary is not easy, so few
species have adapted to these conditions
 Maintaining the proper salt and water
balance in cells and body fluids is one of
the greatest challenges of organisms living
in estuaries
 Most estuary organisms are marine
organisms that can tolerate low salinity.
Living in Estuaries
 Most estuary organisms are euryhaline species,
that is, they tolerate a wide range of salinities.
 The relatively few stenohaline species, those
that tolerate only a narrow range of salinities,
are limited to the upper or lower ends of the
estuary and rarely penetrate in the estuary
proper
 Some live in brackish water, or water of
intermediate salinity
Living in Estuaries
 Soft-bodied estuarine animals, such as many molluscs
and polychaete worms, often maintain osmotic balance
simply by allowing their body fluids to change with the
salinity of the water. These are called
osmoconformers.
 Many fish, crabs, molluscs, and plochaete worms are
instead osmoregulators. They keep the salt
concentration of body fluids more or less the same
regardless of the salinity of the water.
 When salinity of water is lower than that of their blood, they get
rid of excess water and take-up solutes via active transport by
the gills, kidneys, and other structures
 Anadromous fish: migrate from sea to spawn in freshwater
 Catadromous fish: migrate from fresh water to spawn in the sea
Freshwater
Inflows…
Salinity
Nutrients
…By Definition
Sediments
Create and Sustain
Estuaries
Types of Estuarine Communities
 Several distinct communities are
associated with estuaries
 One consists of the plankton, fishes, and
other open water organisms that come in
and leave with the tide
 Several other communities are permanent
parts of the ecosystem
Types of Estuarine Communities
 Open Water
 Mudflats
 Salt Marshes
 Mangrove Forests
Types of Estuarine Communities:
Open Water
 One of the reasons many of the world’s great
cities developed around estuaries is the rich
supply of fish and shellfish in or near estuaries
 Many species of commercially important fishes
and shrimps use estuaries as nurseries
 90% of the marine commercial catch in the
northern Gulf of Mexico, for example, is of
species that depend on estuaries at some point
in their lives
Mudflats
 The bottoms of estuaries that becaome exposed during
low tide often form mudflats
 Organisms exposed to desiccation, wide variations in
temperature, predation, and variations in salinity.
 Bacteria are abundant in mudflats as decomposers of
organic matter.
 Chemosynthetic bacteria (hydrogen sulfide)
 Infauna: Dominant animals in mudflats that burrow
 Epifauna: aniamls that live on the surface or as sessil
forms
 These include detritivores, deposit, suspension, and filter
feeders
Salt Marshes
 Estuaries in temperate and subtropic
regions are usually bordered by extensive
grassy areas that extend inland from the
mudflats
 Sometimes they are grouped with coastal
environments flooded at high tide and with
freshwater marshes and collectively called
wetlands
Salt Marsh
and Mudflat
Some
Inhabitants
of mud
flats
Mangrove Forests
 Mangrove forests (mangals) are not limited to
estuaries, but in some ways they are the tropical
equivalents of salt marshes, though the two
coexist in many places
 Mangroves are flowering land plants adapted to
live in the intertidal
 75% of all sheltered tropical shores were at one
time fringed with mangroves
 Mangrove forests, however, are being rapidly
destroyed by humans
World Distribution of Salt
Marshes and Mangrove Forests
What type of organims lives in
estuaries then?
 Um, every kind… in large numbers!
 More producers than a forest!
 Oysters and clams filtering the water as fast as they can
for all the free food
 Fish use them as a nursery
 Birds use them as a fattening stop in migration
 Bacteria run wild in estuaries
 (and kill people every year in texas)
 Protists like “red tide” algae some grow so dense they
color the water red!
 More fish are caught in estuaries than the entire open
ocean!!!
 So much living things that DDD abounds!!! But no fear,
crabs come out at night and eat their fill!
Human Impact on Estuarine
Communities
 The environmental consequences of human intrusion in estuarine
communities, particularly in highly productive salt marshes and
mangrove forests, have been disastrous
 Countless have been obliterated, and many surviving ones are
endangered
 All around the world estuaries are being dredged to make marinas,
artificial harbors, and seaports
 Others are filled to create everything from industrial parks and urban
development to garbage dumps
 Dredging navigational channels increases the exposure to wave action
and therefore the destruction of salt marshes
 70% of those in California have been lost
 Similar affects are being and have been felt by mangrove forests
 There is evidence that the 2004 tsunami would have been less severe in
some areas if the mangroves would have still been present.
 Mangrove forests also help with shoreline erosion and protects against
storm surges generated by hurricanes.
Texas Estuaries
Galveston bay:
Matagorda bay
Copano Bay &

Corpus christi bay
Laguna madre
Florida Estuaries
Florida Estuary, Gulf Coast
Generalized Food Web in an Estuary
The end

Estuaries

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Estuaries

Where Rivers Meet the Sea

 Estuaries are where

Copano Bay &

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