Sandy Hook's Currents
Dave Grant, Sandy Hook, NJ
Surface currents are generated by the wind and affected by the earth's rotation.
(Typically deflected to the right in the Northern Hemisphere).
The most famous current in the world is the Gulf Steam, which carries warm water from Florida to Europe. It moderates the climate in Iceland, Scotland. Iceland has winter temperatures that are similar to Boston (Much farther south.). Western Scotland has gardens where palm trees can survive. In New Jersey (Blue arrow) the warmth of the Gulf Stream (Red arrows) helps keep us from getting as cold as inland areas in the winter.

Students at the Ocean Adventures summer camp claim to have found this chart of the North Atlantic in a bottle on the beach at Sandy Hook. The only other information on it is initials (B.F.-Phila.), a date (1786) and a limerick (Below). Perhaps you can help them solve the mystery of where this bottle might have drifted before landing on Sandy Hook.

 

The Gulf Stream
"There once was a captain from Nantucket,
Who mapped the ocean with a bucket.
With Franklin, a thermometer
and a line off the beam,
They charted the warm and mighty Gulf Stream."
T.F. - Ship's Captain

A close-up of the chart shows Philadelphia (Green), Sandy Hook (Blue) and the Gulf Stream (Red).

Ben Franklin noted that mail boats sailing from England took two weeks longer to make the Atlantic passage than boats sailing from America to England. He enlisted a relative, Captain Timothy Folger, to help him solve this mystery. Franklin also made daily measurements of water temperatures during his crossings to Europe by lowering a bucket and thermometer over the railing of the ship.

 

A close-up of the 1786 chart shows a blue arrow pointing to what the first Dutch settlers called Sandy Pointe (Sandy Hook).

Note that the chart identifies the major points from Cape Cod (Mass.) to Cape Henlopen and
Delaware bay (Del.).
 

 

 Longshore Currents

Waves breaking at an angle against the beach push water and sand to the North at Sandy Hook, forming a spit. A spit is a peninsula formed by waves and currents, and comprised of loose materials like sand and gravel.

Originally, Sandy Hook received its sand from the eroding bluffs of Long Branch, Rumson and Highlands. That sand moves North from the proximal end through a process called littoral or longshore drift (Red arrow). A seawall ends where the yellow arrows indicate severe erosion at the "critical zone." This is where Sandy Hook's only access road is flooded during storms.

This area is just south of the old lifesaving station, the Park Service Visitor Center.

Spits tend to be narrow and eroded at the (attached) landward or proximal end, and wider at the distal end where accretion or deposition is occuring.

Bottom sediments around Sandy Hook are varied and influeinced by tidal currents.

  

 Looking South from the distal tip of Sandy Hook, note the series of "hooks" that have developed over the last 2,000-3,000-years..  

Sandy Hook is a textbook example of a "compound, recurved spit."

To take a video tour of Sandy Hook, click here.

 

How old is Sandy Hook?
To prepare your students before a field trip, trace the development of Sandy Hook by comparing old charts, and vegetation and soil surveys to see how it has grown over the last several hundred years.

These materials are available in our Sandy Hook - More Than A Day At The Beach curriculum.


Circulation around Sandy Hook Bay is counter-clockwise and water takes several tide cycles to flow from NYC to Sandy Hook. These flowers from 9-11 ceremonies the following year (2002) were tossed into the Hudson River and took four days to drift to the beaches at Sandy Hook.