The first facts about survival by the sea have been recounted. But perhaps we should begin earlier; there are other facts to be learned before we can formulate policies which can give some promise of survival by the sea and indeed permit us to delight in the special joys of the ocean’s edge.
The precipitous faces of the Hudson and Hatteras Canyons and the Blake Escarpment fise from the abyssal oceanic plain of the Atlantic to the Continental Shelf; it is on this shelf (which extends from Massachusetts to Florida) that rests the archipelago of sandbars that forms the New Jersey Shore. While Cape Cod is essentially a terminal moraine with outwash plains, the residue from the Buzzards Bay and Cape Cod ice lobes of the last glaciation, and the Florida Keys are old coral reefs, the sandbars that parallel New Jersey and reach south of Cape Hatteras have more recent origins.