This is where a freshwater river meets the ocean. The main feature of an estuary is that the water becomes “brackish,” which is a salinity halfway between freshwater and the ocean – so, “half salty,” basically.
An estuary can be a simply river delta, or a large ecosystem of marshes and barrier islands.
From the Latin words for “tide” and “boil,” refering to the physical action on the moving river water mixing with the still ocean water.
Several resources commented on how productive estuaries were for wildlife, but the only reasoning I could find was from Brittanica:
On average, estuaries are biologically more productive than either the adjacent river or the sea, because they have a special kind of water circulation that traps plant nutrients and stimulates primary production.