Jacques Cousteau Reserve, New Jersey

Location: The reserve is located eight miles southeast of exit 58 of the Garden State Parkway, in Tuckerton, N.J. Total Acreage: 114,665 Designation: 1998 Lead State Agency: Rutgers University, Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences. Mailing Address: Jacques Cousteau Coastal Education Center 130 Great Bay Boulevard Tuckerton, NJ 08087 Phone: 609-812-0649 Fax: 609-294-8597

The Jacques Cousteau National Estuarine Research Reserve, at the Mullica River and the Great Bay, is the only reserve in the system to be named after an individual. It’s also the only reserve in the system to expand its boundaries seaward to the Atlantic Ocean.

The Jacques Cousteau Reserve encompasses over 114,000 acres in southeastern New Jersey, including a great variety of terrestrial, wetland and aquatic habitats within the Mullica River-Great Bay ecosystem.

The reserve is a concentrated patchwork of federal and state lands managed in partnership through a variety of agencies.

With little more than 1 percent of the reserve subjected to human development, this area is regarded as one of the least disturbed estuaries in the densely populated urban corridor of the Northeastern United States. Occurring within the unique New Jersey Pinelands forest ecosystem, on the coastal plain and the barrier islands of the coastal margin, the Mullica River-Great Bay estuary is of special ecological value.

The high environmental quality of the habitats within the Cousteau Reserve are consistent with the objective of the national reserve system to preserve areas that retain a healthy ecosystem and provide the opportunity to serve the needs of long-term research and monitoring programs.