Living Artwork at Dana Point Festival of Whales Has a Cast of Trillions

Marine biologist Harry Helling has spent months creating four pieces of living art for this year’s Festival of Whales. The only problem is you can’t view Helling’s art in the light because he has fashioned his creations out of microscopic sea organisms that glow in the dark.

Helling has been fascinated with the phenomenon of bioluminescence--the emission of light from living organisms--for years. As director of education at the Orange County Marine Institute and as a principal participant in Dana Point’s 18th Annual Festival of Whales, which opens today, Helling wanted to create a strong--and unusual--environmental message.

“That’s what the festival itself is about,” he says. “It is set up to be an educational program stretching over three weekends with the intent of raising the public consciousness about the marine environment.”

Helling concedes that the recent oil spill has already done a lot to raise awareness about the fragility and complexity of that environment. And through special programs during the festival, he hopes to continue to educate the public about the responsibility we all have in making decisions about the uses of our environment.

“We will even have a couple of exhibits dedicated to the oil spill,” he says. “The idea is to communicate the adaptation of all these animals that live off our shore here.”

Helling has been cultivating and collecting bioluminescent bacteria by the billions and trillions. He estimates it required about 6 billion bacteria to create the 3-inch piece of art that he calls “World Population.” As for how many bacteria are in his largest creation, which measures 18 by 24 inches, Helling says with a laugh: “It would take Carl Sagan to describe the trillions and trillions.”

The concept of creating a work of art out of glow-in-the-dark bacteria began when Helling was an intern in the bioluminescent lab at Scripps Institution in La Jolla.

“It (bioluminescence) is a phenomenon that interests a great number of people,” he says. “And as an educator, one looks for these phenomena to entice people to learn about topics. These bacteria we are using occur naturally in the ocean and live on bodies of fish. They occur worldwide. More people used to know about them in the days before we had lights in our refrigerators, because when you would open the refrigerator door, the fish you had in there would glow in spots.

“The bacteria, when cultured in large numbers, produce visible light; enough so that you can apply them to a surface and get a reasonable image,” Helling explains. “I tried it on a small scale, creating images about 3 or 4 inches across. And now I have enough confidence that with some specially designed plates--and help from local microbiologists--I think I can create an image up to a couple of feet across.” He pauses suddenly and laughs. “I mean they are somewhat temperamental.”

Helling’s bioluminescent artwork will be on display at the Marine Institute from 6 to 8 p.m. March 10, during the third and final weekend of the festival.

Other unusual exhibits at this year’s festival include the “Belly of the Whale,” which comes complete with an artificial beating heart that allows participants to “feel the pulse of a whale.” And there’s the whale breath exhibit where--you guessed it--you can actually smell simulated whale’s breath. “It’s a secret formula we do not divulge to anyone,” Helling jokes. “We’ve tried for more than four years to imitate whale’s breath.”

In the blubber exhibit, participants are invited to coat their hands in lard and immerse them in buckets of arctic-cold water in order to understand the insulating properties of blubber, Helling says. “And this year, we even have a human being in a blubber suit, immersed in arctic-temperature water,” he says. Actually, the lucky volunteer will be covered with lard and will be clothed in a plastic suit before diving into the ice water.

The point of the blubber exhibit, Helling says, is to demonstrate that blubber was one of the adaptations that allowed mammals to survive, and yet it also led to their demise as men hunted the giant mammals nearly to extinction to collect the blubber.

The 18th Annual Festival of Whales will continue through March 11 and will include a variety of events from kayaking demonstrations to concerts. In addition, whale-watching tours will take place every weekend during the festival. Special parking areas will be set aside throughout Dana Point during the festival and visitors are asked to look for signs directing them to individual locations. Free shuttles will ferry visitors to the harbor. For more information, call (714) 496-1094.

Shearlean Duke is a regular contributor to Orange County Life. On the Waterfront appears each Saturday, covering boating life styles as well as ocean-related activities along the county’s 42-mile coastline.