Cardiff in making iron and later steel, brought to the sea by packhorse from Merthyr Tydfil. This was first achieved by the construction of a long canal from Merthyr (510 feet above sea-level) to the Taff Estuary at Cardiff. Eventually the Taff Vale Railway replaced the canal barges and massive marshalling yards sprang up as new docks were developed in Cardiff – all prompted by the soaring worldwide demand for coal from the South Wales valleys. At its peak, Cardiff's port area, known as Tiger Bay, became the busiest port in the world and – for some time – the world's
Cardiff Bay Wetlands Reserve Bay, to create an important new environment from the previous salt marsh, and to help compensate for the loss of the Cardiff Bay mudflats. Edmund Nuttall Ltd. won the GB£120,000 contract to build the Reserve, and work was completed by the end of November 2003. In 2001, a landscape architect, Phil Williams from the Landscape Institute, was appointed. He said: After the Wetlands Reserve was constructed, tonnes of debris had flowed down from the River Taff and collected near the reserve, so in 2003 Cardiff Harbour Authority built a 450-metre floating boom to prevent debris from entering the reserve. Wetlands