Jamaica Bay is often a wondrous place of serenity and even solitude surrounded by a bustling metropolis of millions of people. In its seemingly remote stillness, one can catch glimpses of the Manhattan skyline and watch massive airplanes appear to float into John F. Kennedy International Airport. And although is appears wild and beautiful, little of the bay’s physical setting hasn’t been altered or manipulated over the past 150 years, including its geomorphology, and the sources of its freshwaters, its sediments, and its marshes. It is our “National Urban Estuary—a Bay of Contrasts” (Swanson, 2007). Resilience requires adopting a nested view of how social-ecological systems interact, and the widest and broadest nest is that of the rocks, sediments, waters, and energies of Jamaica Bay.