People, We Have A Whale of a Trash Problem

Prepare yourself for this staggering statistic: 300,000 pounds of plastic ends up in the ocean every nine minutes.

To bring awareness to the issue of ocean plastic pollution, Hub Strategy & Communication and the Monterey Bay Aquarium unveiled a life-sized plastic blue whale art installation on Crissy Field in the Presidio. The 82-foot-long blue whale made from hand-recycled plastic trash debuted in October and will remain on public view there for three months.

The endangered blue whale was chosen as the subject of the art installation to draw a connection between plastic pollution and its impact on marine life around the world. The largest animal ever to live on Earth, a blue whale can weigh about 300,000 pounds – the approximate amount of plastic that ends up in the ocean every nine minutes.

“We created a life-sized blue whale to dramatize the scale of the problem,” said Aquarium Executive Director Julie Packard. “As people view the installation, we hope they’re inspired to make changes in their own plastic consumption and will to join us in protecting ocean wildlife.”

Hub conceived of the idea for the blue whale, and worked with Building 180, an arts management consultancy, to bring in Bay Area artist Joel Deal Stockdill – known for creating artworks from reclaimed materials – along with co-creator Yustina Salnikova.

The two, along with a small team, personally hand- sorted, cleaned and cut plastic trash before transforming it into the panels that compose the artwork.