Quote Originally Posted by Lifepower
Steve got the point there. Also, you can use one big texture with alpha-channel which gets more transparent in some areas. You can even modify this texture at run-time to reflect any changes.
Personally, I would avoid using a very large texture with alpha. That's an expensive texture if it is 32-bit, and depending on the size of the water, the texture resolution may need to be quite high as well. I would use a smaller texture to represent the water surface without alpha, and set the translucency using the vertex colours of the water grid.