Long Island Sound is an estuary, a place where salt water from the ocean mixes with fresh water from rivers and the land. Long Island Sound is unique in that it has two connections to the sea – The Race to the east and the East River to the West – and several major rivers. <br> The Sound provides feeding, breeding, nesting and nursery areas for a diversity of plant and animal life, and contributes an estimated $5.5 billion per year to the regional economy from boating, commercial and sport fishing, swimming, and sight-seeing. <br> More than 8 million people live in the Long Island Sound watershed, and the associated development has increased some types of pollution, altered land surfaces, reduced open spaces, and restricted access to the Sound. <br> People throughout New England and New York all have a stake in Long Island Sound. The entire coastline of Connecticut and part of New York sit on Long Island Sound. Eighty percent of the fresh water entering the Sound comes from rivers that drain states as far north as Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont. <br> Long Island Sound is so important that in 1987 was designated as a National Estuary.