- The Maury Island Aquatic Reserve is located in central Puget Sound and includes 5,530 acres of state-owned aquatic lands in Quartermaster Harbor and along the eastern shoreline of Maury Island. Designated in 2004, the reserve protects extensive eelgrass beds, mudflats, forage fish spawning grounds and includes an Audubon Important Bird Area. The Aquatic Reserve is also a popular recreation area with numerous adjacent public access areas managed by King County Parks and Vashon Park District.
- Shark (Wikipedia)
Sharks are a group of elasmobranch fish characterized by a cartilaginous skeleton, five to seven gill slits on the sides of the head, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head. Modern sharks are classified within the clade Selachimorpha (or Selachii) and are the sister group to the Batoidea (rays and kin). Some sources extend the term “shark” as an informal category including extinct members of Chondrichthyes (cartilaginous fish) with a shark-like morphology, such as hybodonts. Shark-like chondrichthyans such as Cladoselache and Doliodus first appeared in the Devonian Period (419–359 million years), though some fossilized chondrichthyan-like scales are as old as the Late Ordovician (458–444 million years ago). The earliest confirmed modern sharks (selachimorphs) are known from the Early Jurassic around 200 million years ago, with the oldest known member being Agaleus, though records of true sharks may extend back as far as the Permian.