Aerial satellite photograph of the completed restoration project. Pond 10a, the southwestern most corner of the San Diego Bay (left small pond), and Pond 10 (right pond), surrounded by residents of Imperial Beach. Pond 11 is the pond on the far right, also the site of the largest and deepest breach in the project. The road pictured at the top is CA State Route 75, leading to Coronado.

The floating dredge, the "Tornado II" used for the restoration project. The black pipeline seen here was used to deposit the dredged mud and water "slurry" into other areas of the pond, creating higher elevations in some places.

Inside the dredge operation room, construction workers and engineers guide the dredge cutter "head" to contour out channels within the mud, which are pre-designed and inputted into the software.

The dredge automatically knows how deep to cut into the mud because of a GPS unit attached to it's main arm that responds back to the software via satellites. Then, the dredge cutter knows the near-exact elevations of which to carve into the bay mud, and which direction to go.

View from atop the dredge control room. The green arm is the "cutter head" that is stirring up the mud, and siphoning it out to a pipeline, and depositing it in other areas of the ponds.

Engineers experiment with the timing it takes for the mud to settle after being dredged. This was important because there were turbidity standards that the interior of the ponds had to be at, before the ponds could be breached to the surrounding south bay.

This backhoe is removing an old tide gate constructed in the 1960s which previously had taken in bay water into the western salt ponds to start the salt-making process. Then the water in the western ponds was siphoned back underneath the Otay river and into the larger network of eastern salt ponds in the South Bay, where the salinity of the water climbed higher.

The backhoe was one of the first steps in executing the breach of the Pond 11 levee, the largest breach of the project.

After the backhoe was done removing earth, the tide came in for the first time in 60 years into the western salt ponds.

The backhoe (left) scraped away earth on the Pond 11 levee, as the floating dredge (right) contoured a deeper channel below the water's surface to increase velocity of the water flow during tidal cycles.

Project Leader for the San Diego Refuges, gets interviewed by KPBS reporter Ed Joyce while on a special boat ride through the newly-excavated channels in Pond 10.

Chris Nordby, or Nordby Biological Consulting, gets interviewed by KPBS. Chris was an instrumental partner throughout the life of this restoration project.

San Diego Union Tribune Environmental Reporter Mike Lee interviews Andy Yuen during the exciting week of breaching Pond 11 to the rest of San Diego Bay.

Boxthorn is one of the native plants that were planted to help jump-start the growth of salt marsh in Pond 10.

The lucky restoration biologists who transplanted thousands of cordgrass "plugs" into the extremely sticky and sinking mud in Pond 10. That was hard work!

American avocets exploring the newly exposed mudflats and channels, searching for invertebrates to eat.

A California least tern pair decided right away to nest in the newly-transferred dredge deposits from across the bay on the Chula Vista Wildlife Reserve (managed by the Port of San Diego). The dredge spoils from created marsh channels from that project site needed a place to go. So, the material was "slurried" across the bay via pipeline and deposited in the corner of Pond 11 to create a nesting area for terns and plovers. It turned out to be the perfect nesting material!

A green-winged teal was found after the restoration project, exploring the newly exposed mudflats of Pond 10. Soon after, thousands of other migratory waterfowl would be visiting the area to explore.