Estuary - Where the River Meets the Sea Signs 5, 6 and 7 are located along the road leading to the wharf. The first stop is a commemorative plaque for Mackenzie mounted on a rock at the first bend in the road. Sign 5 is located a short distance beyond. There, you will be standing on the edge of a very different world -a world of edges and changes, where the water is salty and fresh; the land is solid and shifting, dry and flooded; where life is abundant but mostly invisible. You will be standing on the edge of an estuary. What is an estuary? An estuary is a place in between - a meeting place of river and sea, of land and water, sometimes flowing, sometimes still - a unique place both in the way it is made and in the life it supports. Thousands of years ago, the great ice sheets which covered these mountains retreated up the valleys and mountainsides, leaving the river mouth drowned in the ocean. The land, now freed from the incredible weight of ice, rose slowly from the sea while thousands of tons of silt and sediment brought down by the river built up tide flats at the mouth of the Bella Coola River. Cycles The seasonal cycles of river floods and the daily cycles of ocean tides set a rythm matched by the cylces of life in the estuary. Salmon run upriver on the spring and summer flows, spawn and die, their remains wash down in the fall floods. The spring freshet brings salmon fry down to the estuary to feed and fatten in the protected and fertile waters. Daily tides bring in salt water, cover the flats, then recede - a cycle of salt and fresh, wet and dry that sets the rythm for the unique plants and animals that live here.

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