Sunrise finds the tide running out, exposing the expansive intertidal flats on southwestern Washington’s Willapa Bay.
Herons fish in the intertidal zone on Willapa Bay near Leadbetter Point. The houses in the distance are across the bay. Wide, open tidal flats are important to herons, geese, and the thousands of migrating shore birds that pass through the bay.
housands of acres of Spartina alterniflora, a grass imported by accident from the East Coast, threaten the traditional uses of the bay by making it useless as shorebird habitat and taking over oyster beds. Specially designed tracked vehicles spray dye-colored herbicide.
The vast flocks of resident and migrating shore birds that feed around and pass through Willapa Bay need shoreline free of Spartina for their habitat.
An oyster dredge ties up at the Port of Nahcotta basin after working the oyster beds on Willapa Bay.
As the tide goes out, boats belonging to oystermen John and Roy Herrold go high and dry at the brothers’ oyster plant and dock.
Low clouds and mist shroud the shoreline as John and Roy Herrold’s oyster dredge Tokeland heads toward their oyster beds on Willapa Bay.
As the morning fog breaks and clouds begin to lift, an oyster dredge heads out of the Port of Nahcotta on its way to oyster grounds on Willapa Bay. Small tree trunks stuck in the bottom demarcate boundaries of different oyster beds.
