Deep the in the heart of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Recreation area, an 82-foot blue whale made entirely of reclaimed plastic is making a splash.
The marine mammal sculpture was installed at Crissy Field this month through a partnership between the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the National Park Service, and the Golden Gate Parks Conservancy to draw attention to the dangers of plastic pollution in the world's oceans, and its specific impact on marine life.
“We created a life-sized blue whale to dramatize the scale of the problem,” said Julie Packard, Executive Director of the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The average blue whale is 82 feet in length and weighs 300,000 pounds.
“As people view the installation,” Packard said in a press release, “We hope they’re inspired to make changes in their own plastic consumption and will to join us in protecting ocean wildlife.”
Bay area artists Joel Dean Stockdill and Yustina Salnikova brought the whale to life by hand-sorting and cleaning plastic trash items, and incorporating them into panels they shaped to form the body of the world's largest animal, which is currently an endangered species.
The installation is part of the Arts in the Parks program and will remain on display through January.