As you begin on the edge of a marsh, you can identify plants such as salt marsh cordgrass, sea ox-eye, sea lavender, glasswort, and black needle rush. The walk across the dredge-spoil island exposes you to dune colonization by sea oats and plant succession, including wild asparagus and Spanish bayonet. As you emerge onto the tidal and mud flat, a different wealth of flora are discovered. Also, many fiddler crabs scurry into borrows as you near. Other crabs, such as the striped hermit, calico and blue crab are often seen.
Many animals have specific salinity requirements for different parts of their life cycle.
One such animal is the blue crab, which needs high salinity for eggs to hatch and immature crabs to develop and lower salinity for the adult to live. So this estuarine area meets those needs. Birds, such as white ibis, black-bellied plover, and willet, can often be seen foraging for invertebrates in the tidal flat on the south side of Town Marsh. Great blue herons and American egrets search for fish. Many migrants can be found on this site including the endangered piping plover, peregrine falcon, and long-billed curlew.