My South Jersey friends would talk about New Jersey being nothing more than a sandbar. And, it is rumored to eventually break off into the sea because it is not on the continental shelf. Can this be true…that NJ is not on the continental shelf? Or, at least the southern half of NJ where the sandbar concept is very obvious?
Mr. Admin: I Googled around and found evidence of North Jersey being on the continental shelf. There is even Hudson Canyon (below sea level) where the Hudson River meets the sea. But, I found nothing on hydrogeology(?) of S. NJ.
I’m pretty sure that the term “continental shelf” only refers to a portion of a continent that is under a relatively shallow amount of water, so it’s kind of nonsensical to talk about anything that’s not under water as being part of a continental shelf.
Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the name continental shelf was given a legal definition as the stretch of the seabed adjacent to the shores of a particular country to which it belongs.
I’m not sure what you are talking about. New Jersey is not on the continental shelf, because it’s actually on the continent. The continental shelf is the part of a continental land mass that is under water.
The surface deposits of the southern half of New Jersey are largely composed of unconsolidated sand, silt, and clay, in contrast to the north, where bedrock is nearer the surface. But that hardly means it’s going to “break off into the sea.”
Marley23, not so sure it is quite garbage as your first link says "Although NJ is situated in the interior of a plate, it is located on a continental margin–the boundary between continental crust and oceanic crust. This boundary does not coincide with the present-day coastline, but is located near the edge of the continental shelf. It also says NJ is on a passive continental margin where, if more active, who knows what an earthquake could do! But, one would have to understand plate tectonics and/or oceanography better to really explain what this means. But, in the least, this could be where this idea comes from.
Your second link confirms what I kept finding by Googling around and seem to only address N. NJ.
The shelf is, obviously, wider in some places and narrower in others. That NJ might be adjacent to a narrower section of the shelf is not at all impossible. It is neither contradictory nor tautological, as some posters here have tried to argue.
I live in California, not far from where a major underwater canyon drops away from the shoreline. At that point, there is very little shelf at all.
Sandbars typically are on the continental shelf. If they were not, they would be deep underwater in the ocean depths (and I am not sure the term “sandbar” wold even correctly apply).
So if southern NJ actually were a sandbar, that would be evidence that it is on the continental shelf, not that it is not.
The OP said “on the continental shelf,” which is clearly wrong and based on a misunderstanding of what the continental shelf actually is.
A glance at a map of the continental shelf of the eastern US shows that the continental shelf is not particularly narrow off New Jersey, but instead reaches its narrowest off North Carolina and Florida.
