It is a much-loved stretch of Celtic coastline, revered by poetry lovers as the place where Dylan Thomas lived his final years and by thrill seekers as a spot for breaking land-speed records.

Now between Thomas’s boathouse home at Laugharne and the natural fast track of Pendine Sands in south-west Wales, an ambitious project is under way to try to help restore one of the world’s most important and threatened habitats: seagrass meadows.

Two species of seagrass, flowering plants that live in shallow, sheltered bays and provide a vital habitat for species including seahorses, octopuses and cuttlefish and are an important carbon sink, are being grown in ponds fed with seawater pumped in from Carmarthen Bay.