NJ Smells Different

When Sam and I were returning from a visit to my parents' last weekend in NJ, I asked him if the countryside looked different from that of the Midwest. (Before you laugh, South Jersey really is a lot of farmlands) He said it looked very similar but smelled different. This confirmed my deeply held belief that you can smell the ocean about 100 miles inland, which I first noticed driving eastward through Maryland. I love it, and I would have described it as "the salt air." However, I read this morning that it's the odor of plankton decaying or something equally unpoetic.