Estuarine, intertidal, mixed coarse, partly enclosed, eulittoral

This is the most commonly mapped habitat type in the Salish Sea. Most estuarine intertidal sites in the Puget Trough have a poorly sorted substratum of mixed cobble, gravel, and sand, often distributed in patches along the beach.  Some small boulders, which are relatively stable, often overlie other substrata.  As in the corresponding marine habitat type, organisms in these habitats are diverse, with both epibiota (plants and animals) and infauna. Given the paucity of bedrock habitat in Puget Sound, cobbles in these habitats harbor a large proportion of the algal beds seen. Clams often thrive in this sediment because it is hard for predators to dig to them. Eelgrass beds often lie just subtidally of these beaches where the substratum becomes less coarse.  These beaches are used as feeding areas by cutthroat trout, juvenile salmon (chum and pink), fish-eating birds such as cormorants, grebes, loons, mergansers, and great blue herons, and bivalve-eating birds such as scoters and goldeneyes.