Carving of Berwick Park's breaching whales begins

The process of carving out a pair of Cypress tree stumps into a sculpture of two breaching whales began in Pacific Grove's Berwick Park Friday. That's according to Pacific Grove Chamber President Moe Ammar, who said that three different donors stepped forward at Thursday's celebration of the Pacific Grove Tourist Information Center's fifth anniversary to fund the project announced last May. Ultimately, Ammar said that the city's rotary club would be donating the $8 thousand needed for the three local artists to transform the stumps into a symbol of the city's surrounding sea life.

It was John Bridges, a Monterey attorney that had the idea for the sculpture after noticing the big stumps on his drive home from work one day. They were left after high winds had broken the major branches off the tree during a January storm, causing the city to cut it down.