Work is underway to clean up and restore King's Bay back to its natural beauty.

Algae and trash have choked the life out of the bay, killing off native plants and habitat, so a company has been hired to start cleaning it all up by sucking it off the bottom of the bay. After that, eel grass will be planted.

Save Crystal River has secured money from the state and is organizing the cleanup project.

"It just became a sick ecosystem, and now we are trying to restore it to health again," said Lisa Moore, president of Save Crystal River. "Many of us have grown up in this community, gone to school here, raised our kids here, and we do remember when it was just an outstanding waterway. It was beautiful, clear water."

State Senator Charlie Dean helped make this all happen. He has been working for a while to get King's Bay cleaned up.

"On a hot summer day to cool yourself off, your parents would bring you to Crystal River and dump you off and let you go get in the springs," he said.

Right now this is a pilot program, but if all goes well and more funding comes in, the plan is to tackle the entire bay.

"We are not going to quit," Moore said. "We want to make sure that our river, our bay, our community is what it once was and what it can be."

All the work should wrap up before Nov. 15 when manatee season starts. After that, work should start up again.