FOR THE LOVE OF ESTUARIES

For much of the population, estuaries are an irrelevance to their lives. Put simply, many people simply see these muddy, often smelly, landscapes as the point at which rivers empty into the sea, and that, quite honestly, is as far as it goes for them.

Others may associate estuaries with pollution and the heavy industry of ports, like the Mersey, the Humber or the Thames. Whether it’s a tiny tidal creek or a mighty mouth of one of our biggest rivers, very few groups of people appreciate just how unique and how important estuaries are, and what role they play in our lives. However, there are some who do, and one of those groups is sea anglers.

FISH FACTORIES

For one thing, the creeks and intertidal mudflats of estuaries and saltmarshes are essential for providing habitat for the fry and juvenile fish of many species, such as bass, mullet, gilthead bream and flounder. Much of