These are the mudflats exposed at low tide on the east side of the Verona-Bucksport bridge. They are completely covered by water at high tide. The stream channel crossing the flat meanders according to the gradient (or flatness) of the slope of the mudflat -- the steeper the gradient, the straighter the channel. Stones and other buried objects also affect the course of such channels. Such flats are inhabited by millions of invertebrate animals, and they support an amazing variety of microscopic plants. Thus they attract bird life at low tide, and fish at high tide -- a clam has a hard job to be happy at either tide!

Remains of these sedimentary environments can be found in the geologic record, and their peculiar characteristics allow geologists to speculate about the conditions under which particular deposits formed. The actual level of these deposits is closely tuned to sea level, so there is a lot of erosion and re-sedimentation which goes on here before such a deposit can be buried by rising sea level and possibly become part of the geologic record. Thus, what is finally preserved reperesnts only the end result of a long process, most of which is lost to our view: studying such present-day environments allows geologists to appreciate what a small slice of real time geologic deposits represent.