An Estuary of National Significance
Near Morro Bay, California
The calm water spreading south from Morro Rock is not just a harbor. It is an estuary, one of the most important stretches of coastal wetland in California, where the fresh water of the creeks meets the salt tide of the Pacific. In the nineteen nineties the federal government declared it an estuary of national significance, adding it to the National Estuary Program.
That program was created by Congress in nineteen eighty seven under the Clean Water Act, and today it works to protect just twenty eight estuaries across the entire country. Morro Bay is one of them. The local partnership, the Morro Bay National Estuary Program, focuses on healing the bay's living systems, and no work matters more than restoring eelgrass, the underwater meadow that shelters fish and feeds the whole food web.
The eelgrass here nearly disappeared, crashing from hundreds of acres to only a small fraction of that within about a decade. Through careful transplanting of thousands of shoots and steady monitoring, the meadows have come roaring back, with far more mapped again in recent years. It is one of the quieter conservation success stories on the California coast, unfolding beneath water that looks, to a passing driver, simply peaceful.
