Photo by Scott Taylor 



Estuary. It's one of those scientific terms that 

 is gradually creeping into our common language. 

 You hear a news reporter use it on the air. You see 

 it printed in National Geographic. But it's a 

 word just on the verge of becoming common, and 

 there is confusion about what it means. 



Fishermen don't bother with the word at all. 

 It's a word they say dit-dots (scientists, in down- 

 east lingo) use. To fishermen, the estuary is Rose 

 Bay, South Creek, Bogue Sound, the Neuse 

 River, places where the fishing is good. 



Well then, what is an estuary? It's a place 

 where the salt water and fresh water mix it up. 

 But there's more to it than that. There are fish, 

 marsh grass, circulation patterns, nursery 

 grounds and more. Things that make the estuary 

 special. 



We asked six Sea Grant scientists — B.J. 

 Copeland, John Miller, Charles Peterson, Hans 

 Paerl, Stan Riggs and Scott Snyder — to tell us a 

 few things that make the estuary different; to tell 

 us a few things that make the estuary interesting 

 to them. They put together some facts and added 

 up some figures. Here's what we learned: 



Over 5,874,000 North Carolinians 

 own Rose Bay. You may not be able to 

 have it surveyed, staked off and fenced in, 

 but you do own a small parcel of that sub- 

 merged land. 



Just as you own part of all the state's estuarine system. 

 We all have a stake in the state's approximately 2.3 million 

 acres of estuaries because they're in the public domain. It's 

 like owning part of your own farm at the sea. 



And, North Carolinans hold the deed to more estuarine 

 land than people in most other states. We have the largest 

 estuarine system on the East Coast and the third largest 

 system in the United States. Only Louisiana and Alaska 

 have larger estuarine systems. 



Biologists believe 90 percent of the state's commercially 

 important species spend at least part of their lives in the es- 

 tuary. For example, in 1982 the state's fishermen received 

 $16.4 million for their shrimp catches, $7.4 million for blue 

 crabs and $5.8 million for menhaden. The estuary serves as 

 a nursery for each of those species and many fishermen owe 

 their livelihoods to that estuarine nursery. 



'J^he mother croaker lays 100,000 eggs. 



The mother croaker has just cast 100,000 eggs into the 

 western edge of the warm Gulf stream on a cold December 

 day. Now it's up to the warm waters to incubate the eggs 

 until they hatch the one- to two-millimeter larvae several 

 days later. 



The ocean isn't a very hospitable home for the newborn 

 croaker. But there is a place that specializes in nursing baby 

 fish, finfish and shellfish — the estuarine nursery. John 

 Miller is intrigued by the life cycle of commercially impor- 

 tant species like croaker. And he believes the months spent 

 in the estuary may be critical to the species' survival and 

 maintenance. After all, the larval croaker wouldn't travel 



100 miles to places like Rose Bay unless there was 

 something to be gained there, Miller says. 



The mother croaker has set her offspring on a time 

 schedule that puts them at all the right places at all the 



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