AMID THE FEAR and disbelief of these challenging times, I found hope among people who believed that their actions counted for something in our rapidly changing world.

At the second annual Scoop the Herring Day in East Providence, I watched a human fish ladder transfer hundreds of schooling, streamlined, fork-tailed, green and silver, plankton-feeding, 6- to 8-inch fish. Teams of three or four volunteers moved the herring from the brackish Seekonk River into fresh water on the other side of Omega Dam, where the Ten Mile River thundered into Narragansett Bay.

Omega Dam is one of several water power structures first erected about 150 years ago along the Bay. The dams inadvertently prevented millions of sea-run fresh water populations of river herring and shad from spawning.

Born in fresh water, the fish migrate to upriver birthplaces each spring after spending months at sea. Shad show up in the Bay later in spring.

Against the pressure of the waterfall and high tide, Armando Medeiros swept an improvised, 10-foot-long PVC-pipe-and-steel-reinforced scoop net at the base of the dam.

After snaring a group of five herring, Medeiros handed the net to a second volunteer at the top of the steps, who gave it to a third man on the embankment. He walked the device over to the pond, dipped and twisted it, releasing fish into fresh water.

“That was a lot of physical exertion, but you knew you were doing something good,” said Medeiros, his head glistening with sweat. He came to the Scoop with colleagues from the Rhode Island Saltwater Anglers Association, and his daughter, Amanda, 19, who sat on an abutment, clipboard in hand, keeping a herring count.

Medeiros handed the net to volunteer Gita Holske, “five feet tall on a good day,” who climbed down for her first-ever scoop. After several minutes, Holske raised the device, which contained three squirming fish. She relinquished the net and raised her arms in triumph. When Holske reached the top of the stairs, her daughter Neela, 2 ½, handed her a dandelion flower.

For 40 years, a local fisherman named Paul Bettencourt transferred herring from the Seekonk into Ten Mile River, keeping the run sustained in a small, yet important way. A few years ago, the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries released additional herring into Turner Reservoir upstream.

Scoop organizer Keith Gonsalves joined Bettencourt two years ago. Gonsalves founded the Ten Mile River Watershed Council, a Rhode Island-based preservation, protection, and education group. He reached the Scoop by kayaking the river from Freedom Green, along with 10 others. All told, the event attracted about 75 volunteers.

“Once we passed the houses on Central Ave, the river turned very quiet,” he said. “You wouldn’t have known if you were in East Providence or on the Wood River in South County.”

On the way to Omega Dam, kayakers saw two white-tailed deer behind Agawam Hunt, while snapping turtles slid off logs into the river.

“The trip gave us an outdoor experience,” Gonsalves said. “Now we get to see these beautiful fish. I’m glad everyone got to see something special today.”

A conglomeration of federal, state and local agencies, plus protection and restoration groups and angler organizations have worked together over the past eight years to get ramp-like fish ladders for herring and shad built at three sites on Ten Mile River at a cost of more than $2 million. The last hurdle before beginning construction is the approval of some of the state money.

Wenley Ferguson, Habitat Restoration Coordinator for Save the Bay, has worked on the project since 1996. “What has encouraged me is the ability of a fish-run restoration project to reconnect people to the river in their backyard and to reconnect those rivers with Narragansett Bay,” she said.

Certainly, folks at the Scoop passed along more than herring. Neighbors, as well as individuals from agencies and groups, shared consideration, kindness and responsibility for the world. As that world shrinks, it is comforting to know that locals still retain a core human quality of cultivating hope through teamwork in an endeavor important to them.

“When I began kayaking 17 years ago, with some of my buddies, we found that no one was taking care of the Ten Mile River,” Gonsalves said. “Here was a public resource in our backyard that you could paddle for hours. This water is more valuable than just moving away our sewage.”

Once a lone fisherman hoisted herring over a roaring dam. I met a dozen of Gonsalves’s relatives at the Scoop. That day, a village did the work.

“This volunteer effort is about saving a world,” said Gonsalves’s wife, Deb, “one fish at a time.”

Scott Turner is a Providence-based nature writer. His columns appear here each Saturday ( scottturnerster@gmail.com).