Tokeland is a small spit sticking into the northern entrance of Willapa Bay.  The estuary is an amazing body of water.  Some write the bay as the second largest estuary on the Pacific Coast.  That depends upon one’s definition of an estuary.  Some include the Puget Sound in the estuary category.  While parts of the Sound are estuarine, the Sound is an inland sea.

Definition of an estuary reads a partially enclosed body of brackish water with one or more rivers flowing into and an open connection to the sea.  The freshwater-saltwater intermix provides high levels of nutrients in both water columns and sediment making an estuary a wildly productive natural habitat.  West Coast Estuary Explorer also includes the Columbia River as an estuary.  They have split the river reaches into eight separate interconnected sections, from the river mouth to the furthest point of tidal influence, Bonneville Dam.  The enormous amounts of freshwater flowing through make the Columbia a special case.