Where can I be found?
Where salt and fresh water meet, we introduce brackish water.
The brackish water hasn't really found its way yet.
In places such as harbours and estuaries, the water is neither as sweet as in lakes and rivers, nor as salty as in the oceans.
For us humans, cloudy and brown brackish water usually looks less inviting.
Why am I important?
The places where rivers flow from the mainland into the sea are a very special habitat.
Strong fluctuations in salinity and high levels of fertilizers and sediments are normal.
Mud, sand, and pebbles that used to be debris are crushed by the water movement of the river and carried all the way to the sea.
As a result, the water here is very murky and the soil is difficult to cultivate.
However, these areas are much richer in nutrients than others: The large amount of dead animal and plant material that washes ashore is a paradise for large blooms of phytoplankton.
Who am I giving home to?
The sweet-salty brackish water doesn't make life easy for its inhabitants: If you want to survive here, you really have to be able to adapt. Everyone else is just passing through.
It is not difficult for saltwater fish to find a home in freshwater - they even migrate along entire rivers.
But freshwater fish are different: They cannot survive in salt water.
Young fish like to retreat to brackish water because it protects them from many other marine life that cannot survive in salt water.
But as nature would have it, other predators take advantage of this: Water birds find crabs and young fish in abundance in brackish water.
What do I consist of?
I would colloquially describe myself as mixed water because my salinity is neither as high as in the ocean nor as low as in rivers or lakes.
By constantly moving, I create a veritable whirlpool of organisms that enrich me with nutrients.
Text: Carolina Leiter
