Learn · Why it matters

Why the shoreline matters.

The bay outside your window is full of neighbors—some with feathers, some with shells, some four hundred million years old. Meet them, learn the story under your feet, and try a few things. For kids, and for anyone who used to be one.

Who lives here

Meet the neighbors.

The bays around Port Washington are full of life. Some animals stay all year; others return when the water warms.

The fish hawk

Osprey

Dives feet-first from high over the bay, then carries its catch off headfirst like a little torpedo.

Overhead from spring through fall—look for huge stick nests on platforms and channel markers.

Older than the dinosaurs

Horseshoe crab

Has been crawling ashore looking more or less like this for hundreds of millions of years.

Sandy coves on late-spring high tides, especially around a full moon.

The bay's water filter

Eastern oyster

A single grown oyster can filter about ten gallons of bay water in a day—every day, for free.

Shells along the tide line—every one of them used to be a working filter.

The salt-marsh turtle

Diamondback terrapin

The only turtle in North America that spends its whole life in salty coastal water.

A small head popping up in quiet marsh channels on summer days.

The statue

Great egret

Hunts by standing perfectly still in the shallows—then strikes faster than you can blink.

Bright white and unmistakable at low tide.

Bunker

Atlantic menhaden

Bunker swim in tight schools and feed on tiny plants and animals in the water. They are food for striped bass, bluefish, ospreys—and, some years, whales.

From spring into fall, look for a patch of water that ripples or splashes as a school is chased from below.

Striper

Striped bass

A striper can live for decades. It hunts smaller fish, including bunker.

Manhasset Bay is a nursery and feeding area for striped bass from spring through fall.

Young ones are called snappers

Bluefish

Bluefish have sharp teeth and hunt in fast-moving schools. When they drive bunker toward the surface, the water can churn like a washing machine.

In Manhasset Bay from spring through fall, especially when the water is warm.

Fluke

Summer flounder

A fluke lies flat on the bottom with both eyes on the same side of its head. It blends into the sand or mud, then waits for fish or small crabs to pass.

In Long Island Sound’s shallow water and bays during the warmer months; it moves offshore for winter.

The story under your feet

This shore has always worked.

Port Washington’s waterfront isn’t just pretty—it built a city, fed a town, and still earns its keep.

The sand that built New York

From 1865 to 1989—more than a century—Port Washington's bluffs along Hempstead Harbor held the largest sandbank east of the Mississippi. Barge after barge carried the sand to the city, where it became the concrete inside New York's skyscrapers, bridges, and sidewalks. By some estimates, ninety percent of the concrete in New York City started as Port Washington sand.

Thousands of people—many of them immigrants who settled here and whose families still live here—worked the pits. The Sandminers Monument on West Shore Road honors them, and the shape of today's shoreline is their legacy.

First, the bay was a pantry

Long before there was a Main Street, the Matinecock people fished these waters and gathered shellfish along these shores—they called the peninsula Sint Sink, “land of many shells.” For generations afterward, oystering and clamming were how many Port Washington families made their living. The bay wasn't scenery—it was the economy.

Still a working waterfront

Boatyards, moorings, sailing programs, fishing boats: the harbor still works for a living. A shoreline people actually use is a shoreline people look after.

What a healthy shore does all day

A salt marsh is a nursery for baby fish, a filter for the rain that runs off our streets, and a soft sponge that takes the punch out of storms. Every healthy stretch of shoreline is quietly working—which is exactly why it's worth knowing, and worth keeping.

Try this

Homework you’ll actually want.

01
Run a low-tide treasure hunt
Slipper shells, crab molts, and mermaid's purses (those black pods are skate egg cases) all show up when the tide pulls back.
02
Watch an osprey go fishing
Bring binoculars to the harbor on a summer morning. A full dive is worth the wait.
03
Catch a Town Dock sunset
Count the boats, name the colors, stay until the streetlights win.
04
Stand where the sand miners stood
Visit the monument on West Shore Road and try to picture how much of the shore passed through their hands.

Ready when you are

The water’s close. Go say hi.

Find your spot on the shore