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World video travel guide
News • United States • 2011-06-17
EXPLORE THE DEPTHS OF LONG ISLAND’S COASTAL EXPERIENCES
HAUPPAUGE, NY-- There’s more to Long Island than just miles of white sandy beaches. From fishing party boats, whale watching, shark dives and scuba diving, to more sedate coastal villages, maritime museums, beachfront camping and lighthouses, the Long Island Convention and Visitors Bureau invites visitors to have some shoreline fun on Long Island.
Visitors to Long Island may be surprised to find that many of the Island’s coastal areas along its North Shore and South shore are largely void of industrial development and high-rise hotels, featuring instead quaint coastal villages and numerous opportunities for boating and recreation, along with those miles of pristine beaches.
THE FISHING’S GOOD: Major marinas can be found throughout the Island, with fishing charters and party boats out of Freeport, Captree Boat Basin, Bay Shore, Greenport and Montauk, among others. Recent regulation changes now allow fishers on party boats to take home five fluke fish at 17 1/2-inches, as opposed to the previous three fluke/18 ½-inches limit. Fishers can also bring home two striped bass, up from the previous limit of one. Several tournaments are also held throughout the season.
Marinas, such as Bay Shore, Port Washington, Oyster Bay, Bay Shore, Freeport, West Islip, and Port Jefferson offer other unique boating opportunities for individuals and groups with Riverboat-style party boats, yachts, and even sloops. For nature-lovers, there are educational wetlands day cruises out of Riverhead and Stony Brook. While in Riverhead, visit the outstanding Atlantis Marine World, a full-scale aquarium featuring seals, sharks, octopus and other live exhibits.
WRECKS, WHALES AND SHARKS: And for those seeking adventure, Long Island offers top notch scuba diving, most notably among the Island’s numerous boat wrecks just off its shoreline. Wrecks in Long Island’s waters range from the 508-ft passenger steamer, Oregon, which sank in 1886 to the Lizzie D, a Prohibition-era rum runner sunk in 1922, among many others.
If you really want to get up close and personal with coastal life, there are two-day whale watch cruises out of Montauk Point through a local coastal research society. Or, for the really daring, there are “shark cage dives” off of Montauk Point, during which participants are dropped inside a cage into chum-filled waters to meet sharks face to face.
TWO DIFFERENT COASTAL EXPERIENCES: Back to the coast and decidedly more sedate, visitors to Long Island can get a taste of coastal life as it was over a century ago by visiting any number of its quaint coastal villages for great shopping and dining. And if beaches are what you’re looking for, Long Island has them. While some of its beaches are for residents only, knowing where to go makes all the difference.
Long Island’s State Park beaches offer visitors a range of experiences due to the Island’s post-glacial age period, during which receding glaciers smoothed out its South Shore to create luxurious sandy beaches, and carried rocks and rich soil up to the north shore, depositing these to create wooded hills and bluffs overlooking the Long Island Sound.
THE NORTH SHORE: Rte. 25A, on the North Shore, winds through Long Island’s “Gold Coast,” immortalized in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous novel, The Great Gatsby, which encapsulated the lives of New York’s high society, with their breathtakingly luxurious estates overlooking Long Island Sound. Several mansions are now open as museums and public gardens. Rte. 25A continues along Long Island’s North Shore through villages and ports, and is known as “Long Island’s Heritage Trail,” with a history dating back to the 1700s. Long Island also keeps its maritime history alive through museums, such as Cold Spring Harbor Whaling Museum, in Cold Spring Harbor
Many Long Island towns have established their claims to fame through their intimate relationship with the sea. Greenport, located on the island’s vineyard-dotted North Fork, grew around the whaling industry in the early 1800s and was a primary port for whale ships and related commerce. It was also a major site for shipbuilding, boasting over 550 ships built in and launched from Greenport from the 1800s until World War II. Today, Greenport’s docks are home to a replica of the tall ship, the H.M.S. Bounty.
On the North Shore of Long Island, where high wooded cliffs meet the gentle waters of the Long Island Sound visitors can enjoy a day of shaded picnicking and beach swimming at Gov. Alfred E. Smith/Sunken Meadow Park; or further east at Wildwood State Park featuring camping and picnic area. Or head out to the end of the North Fork, through Long Island’s vineyards and farmland, to Orient Beach State Park, with picnic area and beachfront facing Gardiner’s Bay.
THE SOUTH SHORE: On the south shore, Freeport has labeled itself the boating and fishing capital of the east for its numerous charters, fishmarkets, pubs, and boat-related businesses. Freeport’s Nautical Mile is the place to be for seafood and enjoying a day on a charter boat.
All along Rte. 27A on Long Island’s South Shore, charming villages featuring great food and shopping abound. The Long Island Maritime Museum in West Sayville offers a unique glimpse at maritime living. Rte. 27A, merging into Rte. 27, follows the South Shore all the way to Long Island’s world-famous Hamptons, where movie stars, sand and surf and upscale shopping are the everyday norm.
Along the South Shore, Jones Beach State Park with six miles of sandy beach also features a lively boardwalk, open air amphitheater, recreational facilities and bath houses, accessible via several major parkways. Further east on Long Island is the pristine shoreline of Robert Moses State Park complete with scenic boardwalk twisting through the dunes to the Fire Island Lighthouse. Heckscher State Park on the South Shore’s Great South Bay features more sedate waters than the oceanfront Jones Beach and Robert Moses, and has picnic areas and recreational opportunities. Traveling along the South Shore and heading further east, the spectacular Hither Hills State Park with its fabulous ocean front campground can be found, and for those who want to venture all the way to the end of the South Fork is Montauk State Park, featuring Long Island’s most famous lighthouse and rocky shoreline known for its great surf fishing.
These water front parks are all accessible via car. For those who want to leave their car and their cares behind, park at any of the ferry terminals along the South Shore, including the Fire Island Ferry Terminal, Sailors Haven Ferry Terminal or Watch Hill Ferry Terminal to take a pleasant ride over to the world-renown beaches of Fire Island National Seashore, a largely protected barrier island on the outskirts of Long Island’s South Shore. Accommodations are offered in charming hotels, inns and cottages.
LIGHTHOUSES: Long Island is also known for its lighthouses, several of which are open for the public to make their way to the top. With over 25 lighthouses built on Long Island since 1796, Long Island enjoys a deep connection to these historic structures. In fact, Suffolk County has more lighthouses than any other county in the United States, many of which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. .
The Long Island Convention & Visitors Bureau and Sports Commission (LICVB &SC) was established in 1979 as a marketing arm for the destination’s nearly $5 billion travel and tourism industry. Based on Long Island in Hauppauge, NY, the LICVB & SC contributes to the economic development and quality of life on Long Island by promoting Long Island as a world-class destination and by attracting individuals, tours, meetings and conventions, trade shows, sporting events, related activities and business to Long Island. For more information about Long Island, please contact the Long Island Convention & Visitors Bureau and Sports Commission by calling 1-877-386-6654 or visit the web site at http://www.discoverlongisland.com.
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330 Motor Parkway, Suite 203, Hauppauge, NY 11788 (631) 951-3900
