Marine Life
Quartermaster Harbor hosts the largest spawning population of Pacific herring in south Puget Sound, and is also a major spawning area for surf smelt. The narrow strip of land between the two islands contains a small saltwater marsh. It is part of the Washington State Department of Natural Resources Maury Island Environmental Aquatic Reserve.
Due to the high concentration of forage fish and shellfish, the harbor is a major wintering area for 35 bird species. The most abundant bird is the Western Grebe, which totals eight percent of Washington's wintering population. There are hundreds of scoters and other diving sea ducks that feed on the shellfish during the winter. The grebes, loons, mergansers, diving sea ducks, gulls, and dabbling ducks, in addition to other species, make a total of about 3,000 individual birds wintering there annually.
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Famous quotes containing the words marine and/or life:
“People run away from the name subsidy. It is a subsidy. I am not afraid to call it so. It is paid for the purpose of giving a merchant marine to the whole country so that the trade of the whole country will be benefitted thereby, and the men running the ships will of course make a reasonable profit.... Unless we have a merchant marine, our navy if called upon for offensive or defensive work is going to be most defective.”
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