Pelican Island — A Bridge-Connected Barnegat Bay Island Split Between Two Municipalities

What Actually Makes Pelican Island Different

Pelican Island is a real, small, bridge-connected lagoon island sitting in Barnegat Bay, part of the Seaside Heights/Berkeley Township area of Ocean County, NJ. A real local bridge -- historically a wooden bridge, according to historical photographs preserved in the Ocean County Memories community archive -- connects the island, meaning this is not a boat- or ferry-only community like several of the special-access islands profiled elsewhere on this site. That structural fact matters for anyone comparing access logistics across markets, but Pelican Island's more distinctive story is administrative, not physical: for decades, the island has sat split between two separate New Jersey municipalities, Berkeley Township and Seaside Heights Borough. This is a real, genuinely documented quirk of New Jersey's famously dense municipal map -- confirmed via Jersey Shore Online's own reporting -- and it is the kind of jurisdictional detail that can matter enormously to a buyer, since which side of that line a specific parcel falls on can affect which town's services, permitting process, and tax rate apply. This page does not state the exact date the split began, and it does not claim the underlying municipal-boundary or tax division itself has been fully resolved -- it has not been, as far as this research pass could confirm. Anyone evaluating a specific address should confirm directly with Berkeley Township and Seaside Heights Borough which jurisdiction actually governs that parcel today.

What has been resolved, at least on one front, is policing. A real shared-services agreement -- confirmed via Jersey Shore Online's own reporting and via Berkeley Township's own official newsflash page -- now has the Seaside Heights Police Department covering law enforcement for the entire island, regardless of which municipality a given property technically sits in. That is a practical, sensible fix for a jurisdictional split that predates it, and it is worth stating plainly because it is easy to conflate with a much larger, separate story: the South Seaside Park secession case, decided by the New Jersey Supreme Court in July 2025, which concerns a different Berkeley Township neighborhood entirely. This page does not attribute that secession case to Pelican Island, and readers should not assume the two stories are related -- they are not. No exact date for when the Pelican Island policing agreement began is stated here, since it was not independently confirmed this research pass; confirm current details directly with Berkeley Township or Seaside Heights Borough.

Pelican Island also carries a real, distinctive form of recognition: NJ Spotlight News featured it in its own piece on New Jersey's genuinely inhabited islands, a sourced, notable framing for a state not typically associated with island living in the way Florida or the Carolinas are. That kind of regional feature coverage is a real signal that Pelican Island is a known, named, recognized place among people who write about New Jersey's coastal geography -- not an obscure spit of marsh. This page does not restate a specific current population figure or exact island acreage, since neither was independently confirmed this research pass; treat "small, inhabited, bridge-connected island" as the honest, qualitative description, and confirm any specific count directly with Berkeley Township, Seaside Heights Borough, or the U.S. Census Bureau's own data for the relevant county subdivisions.

On the real estate side, Pelican Island supports a real, active canal- and lagoon-front market. Multiple independent platforms -- Zillow, Trulia, Weichert, neighborhoods.com, and njcondos.net, alongside listings from local brokerages including Klug Realty Group and agent Cathy Ades -- show active homes and condos for sale on the island, confirming a genuine, ongoing buyer market centered on the canal- and lagoon-front lots typical of this stretch of the Jersey Shore. That is a meaningfully different situation from several boat- or ferry-only islands profiled elsewhere on this site that turned out, on closer research, to have no subdivided residential market at all. This page does not state a current median home price, an active listing count, or a total home count for Pelican Island, since none of those figures were independently confirmed via full-text source review this research pass -- work directly with a local agent for current numbers rather than relying on a secondhand figure.

Several other practical facts that matter for a purchase, move, or extended stay were not independently confirmed this research pass, and this page does not invent them: current population figures; exact island acreage; current Ocean County, Berkeley Township, or Seaside Heights property tax rates (a parcel's specific municipality may affect which rate applies -- confirm directly with the relevant tax assessor's office); any 2025-2026 flood-insurance, zoning, or development dispute specific to Pelican Island beyond the confirmed police shared-services story; storm- or flood-history figures specific to this island, including any Hurricane Sandy (2012) damage total -- while the broader Seaside Heights/Barnegat Bay area's Sandy damage is extremely well documented regionally, this page does not state Pelican-Island-specific figures without further confirmation; and current school enrollment, healthcare facility names, or emergency-response times and capability for the island. Nothing on this page is legal, tax, financial, or medical advice; confirm current jurisdiction, tax rates, flood zones, prices, and storm-recovery specifics directly with Berkeley Township, Seaside Heights Borough, Ocean County, a local licensed agent, and FEMA before making a decision.