The 82-foot-long blue whale beached at a San Francisco park came from the ocean, sort of. It’s made from plastic trash, the kind that increasingly winds up polluting our seas.

The art installation recently put on display at Crissy Field in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area stands as a symbol of the danger discarded plastics pose to marine life and the health of oceans.

Blue whales weigh about “300,000 pounds – the approximate weight of plastic that ends up in the ocean every nine minutes,” the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, Calif., said in a release.

And that plastic “never biodegrades. As in never-never. That means something used once or twice can pollute the ocean for hundreds to thousands of years,” the aquarium’s website says.


The whale is meant to get people thinking about changing their habits to avoid single-use plastic bags and plastic straws, and support more sustainable initiatives.

The whale was built by the aquarium and partners, including the National Park Service and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy.

Bay Area artists Joel Dean Stockdill and Yustina Salnikova created the whale and, along with a team, hand-sorted the trash used in making the creature.

The whale, which was unveiled Oct. 13, will remain on display through January.


Info: Our Whale Tale by the Monterey Bay Aquarium

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