Raritan Bay is a bay located at the southern portion of Lower New York Bay between the U.S. states of New York and New Jersey and is part of the New York Bight. The bay is bounded on the northwest by New York's Staten Island, on the west by Perth Amboy, New Jersey, on the south by the Raritan Bayshore communities in the New Jersey counties of Middlesex and Monmouth, and on the east by Sandy Hook Bay. The bay is named after the Raritans, a branch of the Lenape tribe who lived in the vicinity of the bay and its river for thousands of years, prior to the arrival of Dutch and English colonists in the 17th century.

History

Archeological evidence suggests that humans were already in the region at the close of the Pleistocene. 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 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. Early settlers used these shell piles for road construction and field fertilizer. Tottenville was once well known for its roads paved with oyster shells.

Geology

thumb|left|The south side of Raritan Bay

The Raritan River was perhaps the major drainage channel along the ice front throughout the Wisconsin glaciation (Stages 1, 2, 3 and 4). Prior to that time the region drained southward across the saddle between the Atlantic Highlands and the Newark Basin into the Delaware River 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 Pleistocene fluvial deposits (Bridgetown Formation). During the lowstand in sea level caused by the Wisconsin glacier, the Raritan River carved back into its headlands and captured the major drainages from the Newark Basin.

The bay is crossed by a dredged channel allowing commercial ships to enter the Arthur Kill.

Aquatic species

Raritan Bay's fish include striped bass, fluke, winter flounder, bluefish, porgy, black sea bass, smoothhound shark, northern puffer, northern king fish, oyster toadfish, tautog and weakfish. The crustacean species represented include the blue crab, fiddler crab, green crab, horseshoe crab and spider crab. Clams and mussels also live in Raritan Bay. The bay is a popular destination for recreational fishing due to its proximity to the densely populated areas of Central Jersey and New York City.

See also

  • Geography of New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary
  • Marine life of New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary
  • Long Island Sound
  • Jamaica Bay
  • Lower New York Bay
  • Upper New York Bay
  • New York Harbor

References

  • Geologic History of Raritan Bay