one green growth opportunity. Entrepreneurs and investors have looked at the greater estuary as a possible place for a new airport, and have expanded Southend Airport in the 2010s, which has a rail link to Liverpool Street station, London among others. Salinity The Thames flowing through London is an archetypal, well-developed economy urban, upper river estuary with its sedimentary deposition restricted through manmade embankments and occasional dredging of parts. It is mainly a freshwater river about as far east as Battersea, insofar as the average salinity is very low and the fish fauna consists predominantly of freshwater species such as roach, dace, carp, perch, and pike. It becomes brackish between Battersea and Gravesend, and the diversity of freshwater fish is smaller, primarily roach and dace. Euryhaline species then dominate, such as flounder, European seabass, mullet, and smelt. Further east salinity increases and conditions become fully marine and the fish fauna resemble that of the adjacent North Sea, a spectrum of euryhaline and stenohaline types. An alike pattern of zones applies to the aquatic plants and invertebrates. Cultural references Joseph Conrad lived in Stanford-le-Hope close to the Essex marshes. His The Mirror of the Sea (1906) contains a memorable description of the area as seen from the Thames. He refers to this area in the first pages of his novel Heart of Darkness, describing it as both the launching place of England's great ships of exploration and colonization and, in ancient times, the site of colonization of the British Isles by the Roman Empire. Accent The form of speech of many of the people of the area, principally the accents of those from Kent and Essex, is often known as Estuary English. The term is a term for a milder variety of the "London Accent". The spread of Estuary English extends many hundreds of miles outside London, and all of the neighbouring home counties around London have residents who moved from London and brought their version of London accents with them, leading to interference with the established local accents. The term London Accent is generally avoided, as it can have many meanings. Forms of "Estuary English", as a hybrid between Received pronunciation and various London accents, can be heard in all of the New Towns, all of the coastal resorts, and in the larger cities and towns along the Thames Estuary. Channels For commercial shipping rounding the Nore sandbank and thus