This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

If you're standing on the sidewalk in the New York Financial District in the shadows of glass skyscrapers,

you definitely don't feel like you're at the seaside.

But head a few blocks south and suddenly you're at the edge of the continent looking out at the water.

That's producer Emmett Fitzgerald.

There are docks and seagulls, and ferry boats ready to take you island hopping.

Writer... writer Paul Greenberg moved into an apartment down here over a decade ago.

And up until that point, like a lot of New Yorkers Yorkers I didn't really pay that much

attention to the sea. If I wanted to go to the ocean I would go to Martha's Vineyard or

Long Island. But then he started noticing all these maritime buildings like the old Fulton Fish Market where

fishermen used to sell their catch to restaurants.

I suddenly was sort of confronted with the fact that New York, Manhattan is really a very oceany kind of place.

Greenberg actually writes about the ocean for a living.

His most recent book is called American Catch.

And he started to research the relationship between New York City and the sea. But then in 2012, something happened that made that relationship impossible to ignore.

Hurricane Sandy crashing on shore, winds now at 90 miles per hour,

and this storm is so big, so vast,

60 million Americans will feel its power.

Just south of the South Street Seeper, take a look out here.

That is the Brooklyn Bridge and look at how those winds are whipping the river around.

Hurricane Sandy's storm surge inundated neighborhoods throughout New York City. Seawater poured into the streets, flooding out apartment buildings and filling the subway tunnels.

Greenberg and his family waited out the storm. buildings and filling the subway tunnels.

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