Freshwater Estuaries

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Beth calling from Waukesha, Wisconsin.

Hi, Beth. How are you doing?

Hi.

Pretty good.

What do you do in Waukesha?

I work as a reference librarian.

My mother-in-law is a librarian in Iowa.

Oh, really?

Yes, librarians have a special place in my family.

Okay, well, I ran up against the word which has the librarian stumped.

The word is estuary.

And here’s what happened.

This summer, my husband and I went on kind of a nature study week to the Oregon coast,

And in one of the talks, they mentioned an estuary being the area where an inland river runs into the ocean.

And I thought, okay, but I’m from Wisconsin, and I know that in what we call Door County,

We have the Mink River Estuary.

That is the place where the Mink River runs into Lake Michigan, which is a freshwater lake versus an ocean.

So I was trying to figure out if we need to have saltwater here in order for this to really be an estuary or what.

And I can’t really nail it down.

So you’re calling us and not the Army Corps of Engineers?

I thought this would be more fun.

Get with it, Martha.

My main question is I’m trying to figure out whether the larger body of water has to be salt water or can it be fresh water.

Okay.

All right.

Well, first of all, let’s talk about the word estuary.

And usually the pronunciation is estuary, like estu, which is kind of surprising.

So anyway, it comes from a Latin word that has the idea of different things coming together and churning.

So your question is can it only be fresh water, right?

Or can it only be saltwater?

Is it one or the other, or can it be both?

Okay.

Well, Beth, I have a feeling that we’re going to get flooded, as it were, with emails from estuary experts.

I can tell you that there has been a certain amount of controversy in the scientific world over whether there is such a thing, such a subset as a freshwater estuary.

Okay.

I have one point to make on this.

Thank goodness.

One of the ways that this was resolved, or could be resolved, is just understanding that an estuary is always tidal.

That is, it’s one non-tidal body of water flowing into a tidal body of water.

And Lake Michigan is a tidal body of water.

It feels the effects of the tides, does it not?

Well, I’m not 100% sure.

We do get waves on Lake Michigan, but it’s, you know,

I thought maybe the tides were only for large bodies of water like oceans.

Yeah, that’s what I guess, too.

I think the Lake Michigan is large enough.

I think it is definitely large enough to feel them.

Wow.

Well, you know what, Beth?

You’ve put it out there, and we’re going to put it out there,

And as I said, we’ll probably be inundated with all kinds of information about this.

You guys have a, reference librarians have a Stumper’s email list, right?

I believe we do.

Yeah.

Well, there is an email list.

It’s actually changed places a few times.

It was called Stumpers.

It used to be.

Now it’s called Project Wombat.

And if you Google that, it’s a great place to post these kinds of questions.

And actually, I love to browse it just to find interesting new tidbits.

Because Grant is a big nerd.

Project Wombat.

-oh.

She’s on the case.

Okay.

She’s a reference label.

She’ll find it in no time flat.

And take a look at their archives because you’ll get lost.

You’ll start with estuaries and end up talking about porcupines in Asia.

It’s really interesting.

It’s really interesting.

Well, Beth, thanks for saying that.

So I hope we’ve been of some help for you today, Beth,

Even though there’s not a definitive answer there.

Okay, and I appreciate having the new website to look at also.

Okay.

Yay.

Thanks for calling, Beth.

Bye-bye.

Okay, thank you.

Bye-bye.

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