From shallow sandy habitats to deep boulder habitats, life for Long Island Sound’s marine life is rich in diversity. Long Island Sound’s undersea Habitat Mapping Initiative, with funding that was administered through the Long Island Sound study, is documenting this life in images and maps on its website where you can see for yourself with an Underwater Story Map.
In the early 1990s Connecticut Sea Grant published a popular guidebook of Long Island Sound called Living Treasures: The Plants and Animals of Long Island Sound. Accompanying the book, the Sea Grant educators also developed a slide presentation, which provides a great overview of the plants and animals who live in the underwater and shoreline habitats of the Sound. This photo tour, produced by Nancy Balcom of Connecticut Sea Grant, has been recently updated with new slides and photos. View the presentation with a PDF viewer here:
Long Island Sound is bordered on the south by Long Island, New York and on the north and west by the coasts of Connecticut and Westchester County, New York.
Long Island Sound is the nation’s second largest estuary – a special place where fresh water from rivers and streams and salt water from the ocean meet and mix.
Salt marshes, nature’s nurseries, serve many important roles in the Sound’s ecosystem — nursery, filter, sponge, and nutrient source. Photo by Nancy Balcom.
Mosquito ditches crisscross the marsh; they were originally hand-dug to combat diseases carried by mosquitoes, which breed in pools of standing water. Photo by Nancy Balcom.
Salt marshes have distinct zones of vegetation determined by elevation. Photo by Nancy Balcom.
Tall saltmarsh cordgrass grows along the water’s edge in the low marsh, which is regularly flooded by the tides; this grass tolerates changing water level, salt concentration, and temperature. Photo by Nancy Balcom.
The high marsh is flooded only during storms or unusually high tides; saltmeadow cordgrass and spikegrass (inset) dominate this part of the marsh. Photo: (left) Saltmeadow cordgrass, Spartina patens, courtesy of Judy Preston; (inset) spikegrass with seed heads, Distichlis spicata; courtesy of Nancy Balcom.
Salt pannes are small, “desert-like” depressions in the marsh, where soil salinity can reach levels that are almost twice that of full-strength sea water. Photo by Nancy Balcom.
Glasswort, a succulent plant, grows in the salt pannes and along the edges of the saltmarsh, looking like a field of tiny, spineless cacti; some species turn reddish in the fall. Photo by Nancy Balcom.
Sea lavender, with its delicate purple flowers and wiry stems, grows in salt pannes and the low marsh. Photo by Fred Mushacke.
Download Full Version in English or Spanish
The full presentations are available as downloads with speaker’s notes in PowerPoint:
Printable Living Treasures Tour PPTX (28mb)
Tesoros Vivientes PPTX (28.4mb)
A roseate tern on Falkner Island (© Steven McGuire)
How many different species birds have people identified in Connecticut and New York In Connecticut, the number is 444, according to a checklist of birds that compiled by Connecticut Ornithological Association that appears on the Connecticut Audubon Society website.
In New York, the number of birds who live in coastal habitats in five Audubon Important Bird Areas on Long Island Sound is at least 325, according to Cornell University’s e-Bird survey.
For more resources about Long Island Sound visit our Educational Resources page.
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