Hardy Inlet is an

inlet An inlet is a (usually long and narrow) indentation of a shoreline, such as a small arm, bay, sound, fjord, lagoon or marsh, that leads to an enclosed larger body of water such as a lake, estuary, gulf or marginal sea. Overview In marine ...

that is located in the

South West The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sep ...

region of

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to t ...

. The town of Augusta is situated on the South Western shore of the inlet, the inlet opens to the

Southern Ocean The Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean, comprises the southernmost waters of the World Ocean, generally taken to be south of 60° S latitude and encircling Antarctica. With a size of , it is regarded as the second-smal ...

via

Flinders Bay Flinders Bay is a bay and locality that is immediately south of the townsite of Augusta, and close to the mouth of the Blackwood River. The locality and bay lies to the north east of Cape Leeuwin which is the most south-westerly mainland poi ...

. Both the

Blackwood River The Blackwood River is a major river and catchment in the South West of Western Australia. Course The river begins at the junction of Arthur River and Balgarup River near Quelarup and travels in a south westerly direction through the tow ...

and the

Scott River The Scott River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed March 9, 2011 river in Siskiyou County, California, United States. It is a tributary of the Klamath River, one of the ...

discharge into the north eastern end of the inlet. The inlet is a wave dominated

estuary An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environm ...

with a high sediment trapping efficiency, it is always open to the ocean and the water is

turbid Turbidity is the cloudiness or haziness of a fluid caused by large numbers of individual particles that are generally invisible to the naked eye, similar to smoke in air. The measurement of turbidity is a key test of water quality. Fluids c ...

. The total surface area of the inlet is . Hardy Inlet is the wide, lower basin of the Blackwood Estuary with a long narrow and shifting entrance channel. The majority of the inlet is made up of shallow banks with a depth of less than found between channels between to in depth.

Algal Algae (; singular alga ) is an informal term for a large and diverse group of photosynthetic eukaryotic organisms. It is a polyphyletic grouping that includes species from multiple distinct clades. Included organisms range from unicellular micr ...

blooms have been recorded in the inlet around Molloy Island and West Bay as a result of elevated nutrient levels, particularly

Nitrogen Nitrogen is the chemical element with the symbol N and atomic number 7. Nitrogen is a nonmetal and the lightest member of group 15 of the periodic table, often called the pnictogens. It is a common element in the universe, estimated at se ...

and

Phosphorus Phosphorus is a chemical element with the symbol P and atomic number 15. Elemental phosphorus exists in two major forms, white phosphorus and red phosphorus, but because it is highly reactive, phosphorus is never found as a free element on Ea ...

levels. Warnings have been issued so that people do not consume shellfish such as

mussel Mussel () is the common name used for members of several families of bivalve molluscs, from saltwater and freshwater habitats. These groups have in common a shell whose outline is elongated and asymmetrical compared with other edible clams, which ...

s and

oyster Oyster is the common name for a number of different families of salt-water bivalve molluscs that live in marine or brackish habitats. In some species, the valves are highly calcified, and many are somewhat irregular in shape. Many, but not ...

s which can filter out the toxic algae. Commercial fishing was once conducted within the inlet but all licences have now been cancelled and only recreational fishing is permitted.

References

{{coord, 34, 17, 38, S, 115, 10, 10, E, source:enwiki-plaintext-parser, display=title Inlets of Western Australia Blackwood River