New York Harbor

New York Harbor

New York Harbor is a geographic term that refers collectively to the bays and tidal estuaries near the mouth of the Hudson and adjacent rivers in the vicinity of New York City. In a narrower sense, the term is sometimes taken to refer specifically to Upper New York Bay.

In the broad sense, the term may be loosely taken to include the following bodies of body:

Upper New York Bay
Lower New York Bay
Newark Bay
The Narrows
North River (i.e., the lower Hudson River)
East River
Arthur Kill
Kill Van Kull
Jamaica Bay
Harlem River

In socioeconomic terms, the phrase has historically implied the commerical activity of the port of New York City, including the waterfronts of the five boroughs and nearby cities in New Jersey on the Hudson River.

Throughout its history, the harbor has the most important port in the United States and furnished one of the principal means by which passengers and goods were transported to and from New York City.

Since the 1950s, New York City proper as a commercial port has been almost completely eclipsed by the container ship facility at nearby Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal in Newark Bay, which is the largest such port on the Eastern Seaboard.

A persistent misconception holds that the harbor is largely devoid of marine life. In reality, it supports a great variety of thriving aquatic species.

See: Marine life of New York Harbor, Geography of New York Harbor