Eelgrass meadows used to stretch as far as the eye could see along the shore of Narragansett Bay and the dozens of shallow estuaries and salt ponds of Rhode Island. The green shoots waved in the breeze — dry at low tide when they were habitat for innumerable clams and crabs, immersed to the tips at high when they became a protected nursery for immature stripers and other fish. Such 19th Century painters such as Martin Johnson Heade and Edward Bannister were fascinated by southeastern New England’s vast eelgrass beds.

But over the decades the eelgrass declined, attacked by pollution, removed by dredging and washed away by propellers. And in recent years, bodies such as the state Coastal Resources Management Council and Save the Bay have undertaken extensive programs to restore the Bay’s eelgrass marshes. In Save the Bay’s case this was by volunteers laboriously replanting the shallows and tidal flats where the plants once thrived, and in CRMC’s case by removing sand and silt that has smothered them in the ponds along the state’s southern shore.

Now the results are beginning to show in a major way. It’s clear that the work has been worthwhile, evidence that the Bay’s waters are cleaner and less opaque than they were before the great effort to improve water quality in the Bay began, in the 1960s and ’70s.

The CRMC, along with the state Department of Environmental Management (into which the CRMC should be merged) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, recently received recognition from Coastal America, a coalition of federal, state and other groups seeking to solve coastal problems, for its work to restore eelgrass beds in Winnapaug, Ninigret and Quonochontaug ponds.

In the 1950s the state had widened the natural inlets to these ponds from the sea, building stone jetties, and in the process altering the tidal currents. The result was that sand from the ocean began to blanket the bottoms of the ponds, burying the once plentiful eelgrass beds. In 1997, the CRMC began a remediation program, dredging sand from the ponds and depositing it offshore, as well as creating catch basins to keep more sand from entering the ponds. Within a year, eelgrass was regenerating successfully, and growth since has exceeded project expectations.

Congratulations and thanks to all.