While a massive Blue Whale skeleton exhibit is being restored, augmented reality (AR) is providing visitors to Santa Cruz’s Seymour Marine Discovery Center with a lifelike view of this graceful creature. Employing the latest technology, visual effects studio Halon Entertainment used laser technology to create a three-dimensional scan of Ms. Blue’s skeleton and then created a digital 3-D model of the skeleton and body, seen in the AR experience. Halon Entertainment created computer graphics for films such as “Avatar,” “Jurassic World” and several in the Star Wars series. 

By downloading an app and scanning a symbol posted near the skeleton, the whale comes to life on screen, as a three-dimensional representation of Ms. Blue’s full body appears just as it would have been when she was alive, as well as her skeleton. This technology-driven exhibit takes the places of the actual skeleton as the bones are being refurbished.  

The 87-foot-long skeleton has greeted visitors for a quarter century at the entrance of the museum. Nicknamed “Ms. Blue,” the 87-foot-long-skeleton washed ashore on Pescadero State Beach an hour north of Santa Cruz in 1979. The bones were preserved, then cleaned, refurbished, reassembled and mounted outside the aquatic museum. Ms. Blue soon became the center’s mascot, providing a preview to those entering the marine lab of its exhibits: displays of sharks, sea stars, anemones, hermit crabs and other creatures that call the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary which the center over looks, home.