Little Egg Harbor is a township at the southern tip of Ocean County, New Jersey, on the Jersey Shore, where the mainland meets the broad, marshy waters of Great Bay and the Barnegat Bay estuary. The 2020 census counted 20,784 residents, making it a substantial year-round community and the southernmost municipality in both Ocean County and the New York metropolitan area. Long Beach Island, the region's famous barrier-island beach strip, lies just across the bay, connected by causeway. The township's identity is inseparable from the water. Its eastern and southern edges are threaded with lagoons, creeks, and tidal channels, and many of its neighborhoods are built directly around them. Mystic Island, the township's most prominent waterfront subdivision, is a dense grid of canal-front homes where residents keep boats at their own docks and reach the bay in minutes. Boating, fishing, clamming, and crabbing are part of everyday life rather than occasional recreation. The Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, which protects roughly 47,000 acres of salt marsh and coastal habitat, wraps around the township's shoreline and brings birding and open-space conservation to the area's character. The Mystic Island Preserve and other protected tracts add to the sense of a community living alongside — and on — the water. Little Egg Harbor also functions as a practical mainland base for the broader barrier-island region. The borough of Tuckerton, a historic seaport community, is surrounded by the township as a separate municipality, and the Garden State Parkway places the township within reach of both Atlantic City and the New York-Philadelphia corridor. For residents, the township offers a mix of waterfront living, year-round community, and access to one of New Jersey's most distinctive coastal landscapes.