Raritan Bay is a bay located at the southern portion of

Lower New York Bay Lower New York Bay is a section of New York Bay south of the Narrows (the strait between Staten Island and Brooklyn). The eastern end of the Bay is marked by two spits of land, Sandy Hook, New Jersey, and Rockaway, Queens. The waterway b ...

between the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sover ...

s of New York and

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

and is part of the

New York Bight The New York Bight is the geological identification applied to a roughly triangular indentation, regarded as a bight, along the Atlantic coast of the United States that extends northeasterly from Cape May Inlet in New Jersey to Montauk Point on ...

. The bay is bounded on the northwest by New York's

Staten Island Staten Island ( ) is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Richmond County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located in the city's southwest portion, the borough is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull an ...

, on the west by

Perth Amboy, New Jersey Perth Amboy is a city (New Jersey), city in Middlesex County, New Jersey, Middlesex County, New Jersey. Perth Amboy is part of the New York metropolitan area. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 U.S. census, the city's population was 55,4 ...

, on the south by the

Raritan Bayshore The Raritan Bayshore region of New Jersey is a subregion of the larger Jersey Shore. It is the area around Raritan Bay from The Amboys to Sandy Hook, in Monmouth and Middlesex counties, including the towns of Woodbridge, Perth Amboy, South Amboy, ...

communities in the New Jersey counties of

Middlesex Middlesex (; abbreviation: Middx) is a Historic counties of England, historic county in South East England, southeast England. Its area is almost entirely within the wider urbanised area of London and mostly within the Ceremonial counties of ...

and

Monmouth Monmouth ( , ; cy, Trefynwy meaning "town on the Monnow") is a town and community in Wales. It is situated where the River Monnow joins the River Wye, from the Wales–England border. Monmouth is northeast of Cardiff, and west of London. I ...

, and on the east by

Sandy Hook Bay The Raritan Bayshore region of New Jersey is a subregion of the larger Jersey Shore. It is the area around Raritan Bay from The Amboys to Sandy Hook, in Monmouth and Middlesex counties, including the towns of Woodbridge, Perth Amboy, South Amboy, ...

. The bay is named after the Raritans, a branch of the

Lenape The Lenape (, , or Lenape , del, Lënapeyok) also called the Leni Lenape, Lenni Lenape and Delaware people, are an indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, who live in the United States and Canada. Their historical territory includ ...

tribe who lived in the vicinity of the bay and its

river A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of wate ...

for thousands of years, prior to the arrival of

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

and

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

colonists in the 17th century.

History

Archeological evidence suggests that humans were already in the region at the close of the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...

. The early "Big Game Hunters" vanished, but the coastal regions were resettled by peoples accustomed to village-style living ("tidewater communities") that subsisted on hunting and gathering marine shellfish, and eventually, on agriculture. In pre-Columbian times "woodlands cultures" probably centered in the Ohio Valley became the dominant cultural influence in the region. Large

shell middens A midden (also kitchen midden or shell heap) is an old dump for domestic waste which may consist of animal bone, human excrement, botanical material, mollusc shells, potsherds, lithics (especially debitage), and other artifacts and ecofac ...

were found around Raritan Bay and on Staten Island, a testament of the utilization of the bay for food by Algonquin Indian tribes (Lenapes) who occupied the area when early Colonialists arrived. Unfortunately, early settlers used these shell piles for road construction and field fertilizer. Tottenville was once well known for its roads paved with oyster shells.Geologic History of Raritan Bay
from the

U.S. Department of the Interior The United States Department of the Interior (DOI) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government headquartered at the Main Interior Building, located at 1849 C Street NW in Washington, D.C. It is responsible for the man ...

U.S. Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, and ...

, accessed June 24, 2008

Geology

The

Raritan River Raritan River is a major river of New Jersey. Its Drainage basin, watershed drains much of the mountainous area of the central part of the state, emptying into the Raritan Bay on the Atlantic Ocean. History Geologists assert that the lower Rar ...

was perhaps the major drainage channel along the ice front throughout the

Wisconsin glaciation The Wisconsin Glacial Episode, also called the Wisconsin glaciation, was the most recent glacial period of the North American ice sheet complex. This advance included the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, which nucleated in the northern North American Cor ...

(Stages 1, 2, 3 and 4). Prior to that time the region drained southward across the saddle between the

Atlantic Highlands Atlantic Highlands is a borough in Monmouth County, New Jersey, in the Bayshore Region. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough's population was 4,385,Newark Basin The Newark Basin is a sediment-filled rift basin located mainly in northern New Jersey but also stretching into south-eastern Pennsylvania and southern New York. It is part of the system of Eastern North America Rift Basins. Geology Approximat ...

into the

Delaware River The Delaware River is a major river in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. From the meeting of its branches in Hancock (village), New York, Hancock, New York, the river flows for along the borders of N ...

Valley. This saddle area is a very broad flood plain that preserves river terrace gravels ( Pensauken Formation) from the Sangemon Interglacial State (Stage 5), as well as older

fluvial In geography and geology, fluvial processes are associated with rivers and streams and the deposits and landforms created by them. When the stream or rivers are associated with glaciers, ice sheets, or ice caps, the term glaciofluvial or fluviog ...

deposits ( Bridgetown Formation). During the lowstand in sea level caused by the

Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...

glacier, the

carved back into its headlands and captured the major drainages from the

Newark Basin The Newark Basin is a sediment-filled rift basin located mainly in northern New Jersey but also stretching into south-eastern Pennsylvania and southern New York. It is part of the system of Eastern North America Rift Basins. Geology Approximat ...

. As the Wisconsin glaciers melted, the

Flandrian Transgression The Flandrian interglacial or stage is the name given by geologists and archaeologists in the British Isles to the first, and so far only, stage of the Holocene epoch (the present geological period), covering the period from around 12,000 years ago ...

eventually flooded the deeper valleys of the

Hudson Hudson may refer to: People * Hudson (given name) * Hudson (surname) * Henry Hudson, English explorer * Hudson (footballer, born 1986), Hudson Fernando Tobias de Carvalho, Brazilian football right-back * Hudson (footballer, born 1988), Hudso ...

, Raritan, and Arthur Kill. During warming at the end of the Pleistocene and

Early Holocene In the geologic time scale, the Greenlandian is the earliest age or lowest stage of the Holocene Epoch or Series, part of the Quaternary. Beginning in 11,650 BP (9701 BCE or 300 HE) and ending 8,276 BP (6237 BCE or 3764 HE), it is the earlie ...

, the area encompassing Raritan Bay changed from

tundra In physical geography, tundra () is a type of biome where tree growth is hindered by frigid temperatures and short growing seasons. The term ''tundra'' comes through Russian (') from the Kildin Sámi word (') meaning "uplands", "treeless moun ...

to a landscape dominated by spruce and pine forests. These forests gradually gave way to the modern deciduous forest in the region by mid-

Holocene The Holocene ( ) is the current geological epoch. It began approximately 11,650 cal years Before Present (), after the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene togethe ...

time. Lagoons and bays in the area around Sandy Hook hosted oysters, hard and soft shell clams, lobsters, blue crabs, and a variety of other

invertebrates Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...

common in bays in the region today. South of western Long Island, tidal flats and wetlands occupied the margins of a tidal estuary (now submerged by marine waters). Inner Raritan Bay began to fill about 2,500 years ago with large oyster beds forming along the estuarine tributaries. Sea level continued to rise about one foot per century. This rise in sea level has resulted in the landward migration of the shoreline (aided by storm-induced

coastal erosion Coastal erosion is the loss or displacement of land, or the long-term removal of sediment and rocks along the coastline due to the action of waves, currents, tides, wind-driven water, waterborne ice, or other impacts of storms. The landward ...

) as much as two miles in some portions of the coast since colonial times.

Economy and ecology

The bay supported a lucrative fishing and

shellfish Shellfish is a colloquial and fisheries term for exoskeleton-bearing aquatic invertebrates used as food, including various species of molluscs, crustaceans, and echinoderms. Although most kinds of shellfish are harvested from saltwater envir ...

industry during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially oysters, which helped to support a stable population around the bay and aided, in part, to feed the flood of immigration. Stable communities continued to grow and change with new industries supporting a larger population base. Advances in methods of fishing and shellfish collecting resulted in overextraction of these resources from the bay. The peak of the fishing industry occurred in the late 1880s to 1910s. Fishing and farming slowly gave way to industries including ship building, ceramics, chemicals and paint manufacturing, electrolytic copper refining, and petroleum refining. In the

Keasbey, New Jersey Keasbey is an Local government in New Jersey#Unincorporated communities, unincorporated community located within Woodbridge Township, New Jersey, Woodbridge Township, in Middlesex County, New Jersey. It is located on the western outskirts of Perth ...

area, large pits were dug to extract the clays for ceramics and bricks, and huge chemical dumps,

fly ash Fly ash, flue ash, coal ash, or pulverised fuel ash (in the UK) plurale tantum: coal combustion residuals (CCRs)is a coal combustion product that is composed of the particulates (fine particles of burned fuel) that are driven out of coal-fired ...

piles, and

landfill A landfill site, also known as a tip, dump, rubbish dump, garbage dump, or dumping ground, is a site for the disposal of waste materials. Landfill is the oldest and most common form of waste disposal, although the systematic burial of the waste ...

s were created to accommodate the waste from the growing industrial empire. The building of shore management structures (dikes, groins, seawalls), the spraying of

DDT Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, commonly known as DDT, is a colorless, tasteless, and almost odorless crystalline chemical compound, an organochloride. Originally developed as an insecticide, it became infamous for its environmental impacts. ...

(and other

pesticide Pesticides are substances that are meant to control pests. This includes herbicide, insecticide, nematicide, molluscicide, piscicide, avicide, rodenticide, bactericide, insect repellent, animal repellent, microbicide, fungicide, and lampri ...

s) to control the mosquito problem, the carving of ditches to drain wetlands, the filling of shore lowlands, the channelization of creeks, highway and sewer construction, neighborhood development, and a myriad point and non-point sources of household, automobile, industrial chemicals, and ocean dumping all contributed to growing toxicity of the bay. For most of the 20th century, the shores of Arthur Kill have been home to the largest petroleum importing, refining, and storage facilities on Earth; as a consequence the estuary has been host to major and minor oil spills. In addition, Arthur Kill drains the area encompassing the second largest landfill on Earth (

Fresh Kills Landfill The Fresh Kills Landfill was a landfill covering in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Staten Island in the United States. The name comes from the landfill's location along the banks of the Fresh Kills estuary in western State ...

). This landfill, and others along the Raritan River, provide an ample supply of

leachate A leachate is any liquid that, in the course of passing through matter, extracts soluble or suspended solids, or any other component of the material through which it has passed. Leachate is a widely used term in the environmental sciences wher ...

to the waterways. Chemical wastes cause stress and disruption of the life cycles of plankton, shellfish and other invertebrates, and the fish, birds, and other wildlife that they support. The result was an ecological disaster. The bay approached sterile conditions at the peak of pollution and algal bloom-induced anoxia. Environmental actions from the 1970s to present have helped slowly bring back sea life, but current conditions pale to the wealth of marine resources of the past; certain species of fish and birds continue to decline, and the introduction of tenacious exotic species from around the world contribute to their decline. As a sign of optimism though, oysters are beginning to naturally reappear in the Hudson River after having vanished completely about the time of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. Regional industrial overdevelopment and other pollution factors have raised

PCB PCB may refer to: Science and technology * Polychlorinated biphenyl, an organic chlorine compound, now recognized as an environmental toxin and classified as a persistent organic pollutant * Printed circuit board, a board used in electronics * ...

levels in the fish catch and prompted government recommendations against its routine consumption. The bay is crossed by a

dredged Dredging is the excavation of material from a water environment. Possible reasons for dredging include improving existing water features; reshaping land and water features to alter drainage, navigability, and commercial use; constructing da ...

channel Channel, channels, channeling, etc., may refer to: Geography * Channel (geography), in physical geography, a landform consisting of the outline (banks) of the path of a narrow body of water. Australia * Channel Country, region of outback Austral ...

allowing commercial ships to enter the Arthur Kill.

Aquatic species

Raritan Bay's fish include

striped bass The striped bass (''Morone saxatilis''), also called the Atlantic striped bass, striper, linesider, rock, or rockfish, is an anadromous perciform fish of the family Moronidae found primarily along the Atlantic coast of North America. It has al ...

fluke Fluke may refer to: Biology * Fluke (fish), a species of marine flatfish * Fluke (tail), the lobes of the tail of a cetacean, such as dolphins or whales, ichthyosaurs, mosasaurs Mosasaurs (from Latin ''Mosa'' meaning the 'Meuse', and Greek ...

winter flounder The winter flounder (''Pseudopleuronectes americanus''), also known as the black back, is a right-eyed ("dextral") flatfish of the family Pleuronectidae. It is native to coastal waters of the western north Atlantic coast, from Labrador, Canada to ...

bluefish The bluefish (''Pomatomus saltatrix'') is the only extant species of the family Pomatomidae. It is a marine pelagic fish found around the world in temperate and subtropical waters, except for the northern Pacific Ocean. Bluefish are known as ta ...

, porgy,

black sea bass The black sea bass (''Centropristis striata'') is a species of marine ray-finned fish, a sea bass from the subfamily Serraninae which is part of the family Serranidae, which also includes the groupers and anthias. It is found in the western Atl ...

, smoothhound shark,

northern puffer The northern puffer, ''Sphoeroides maculatus'', is a species in the family Tetraodontidae, or pufferfishes, found along the Atlantic coast of North America. Unlike many other pufferfish species, the flesh of the northern puffer is not poisonous ( ...

, northern king fish,

oyster toadfish The oyster toadfish, ''Opsanus tau'', also known as the oyster toad, ugly toad, oyster cracker, oyster catcher, and bar dog, is a Northeast Atlantic species of fish of the family Batrachoididae. The maximum length of this toadfish is , but they i ...

tautog The tautog (''Tautoga onitis''), also known as the blackfish, is a species of wrasse native to the western Atlantic Ocean from Nova Scotia to South Carolina. This species inhabits hard substrate habitats in inshore waters at depths from . It is ...

and

weakfish The weakfish, ''Cynoscion regalis'', is a marine fish of the drum family Sciaenidae. A medium-large, slender, marine fish, it is found along the east coast of North America. The head and back of this fish are dark brown in color with a greenish t ...

. The crustacean species represented include the

blue crab Blue crab may refer to: * Blue Crab 11, an American sailboat design * ''Callinectes sapidus'' – Chesapeake or Atlantic blue crab of the West Atlantic, introduced elsewhere * '' Cardisoma guanhumi'' – blue land crab of the West Atlantic * '' Dis ...

fiddler crab The fiddler crab or calling crab may be any of more than one hundred species of semiterrestrial marine crabs in the family Ocypodidae, well known for their sexual dimorphism, sexually dimorphic claws; the males' major claw is much larger than th ...

green crab ''Carcinus maenas'' is a common littoral crab. It is known by different names around the world. In the British Isles, it is generally referred to as the shore crab, or green shore crab. In North America and South Africa, it bears the name europ ...

horseshoe crab Horseshoe crabs are marine and brackish water arthropods of the family Limulidae and the only living members of the order Xiphosura. Despite their name, they are not true crabs or crustaceans: they are chelicerates, most closely related to arachn ...

and

spider crab The Majoidea are a superfamily of crabs which includes the various spider crabs. Taxonomy In "''A classification of living and fossil genera of decapod crustaceans''" De Grave and colleagues divided Majoidea into six families: * Family Epialti ...

Clam Clam is a common name for several kinds of bivalve molluscs. The word is often applied only to those that are edible and live as infauna, spending most of their lives halfway buried in the sand of the seafloor or riverbeds. Clams have two she ...

s and

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

s also live in Raritan Bay. The bay is a popular destination for

recreational fishing Recreational fishing, also called sport fishing or game fishing, is fishing for leisure, exercise or competition. It can be contrasted with commercial fishing, which is professional fishing for profit; or subsistence fishing, which is fishing ...

due to its proximity to the densely populated areas of

Central Jersey Central Jersey is the central region of the U.S. state of New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, ...

and

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

References

External links