A narrow north-south-trending submarine ridge composed of coarse brown sand lies seaward of False Cape, Virginia. The ridge joins the present coast at the Virginia-North Carolina boundary (36° 33^prime N.) and extends northward approximately 8 miles to a point southeast of Little Island Coast Guard Station (36° 40^prime N.). The ridge is well defined by the 30-foot depth contour. Depths of 16-20 feet are common along the crest of the ridge; the water deepens to 30 feet or more on both its landward and seaward sides. The bottom sediment consists of fine gray sand in the deeper water landward and seaward of the ridge and also north of it.

The surface of the coarse-grained sand on the ridge consists of symmetrical ripples with wave length of 50 cm. and height of 10 cm.; these ripples were active on a day when the height of the swell was 2-3 feet. The fine-grained sand landward of the ridge showed symmetrical ripples of 10 cm. wave length and 2-4 cm. height under the same swell conditions where the depth was less than 25-30 feet. In water of greater depth, no ripples were present and the bottom consisted of mounds and pits and other organic structures.

The ridge is only one of a series of north-south-trending linear sand bodies that occur both landward and seaward of the modern shoreline. These ridges are tentatively interpreted as ancient coastal dune-beach complex which formed at various Pleistocene stands of the sea but have been truncated by the present shoreline, whose trend is approximately N. 30° W. from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, to Cape Henry, Virginia. The origin of this change in trend of shoreline orientation is not known at the present time.

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