Natural Features
The rivers Leven, Kent, Keer, Lune and Wyre drain into the Bay, with their various estuaries making a number of peninsulas within the bay. Much of the land around the bay is reclaimed, forming salt marshes used in agriculture. Morecambe Bay is also an important wildlife site, with abundant bird life and varied marine habitats, and there is a bird observatory at Walney Island.
The bay is also notorious for its quicksand and fast moving tides (it is said that the tide can come in "as fast as a horse can run"). It is particularly infamous due to the '2004 Morecambe Bay Disaster' in which 23 Chinese illegal immigrant cockle pickers are believed to have drowned due to the tide.
Read more about this topic: Morecambe Bay
Famous quotes containing the words natural and/or features:
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“Each reader discovers for himself that, with respect to the simpler features of nature, succeeding poets have done little else than copy his similes.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)