Updated: New 'Whale Tail' License Plates Available

Editor's Note: Three days after this story posted, Steve Creech of the Wyland Foundation contacted Patch with more information, which we've excerpted in italics below.

BAY CITY NEWS – The California Coastal Commission unveiled a new specialty "whale tail" license plate designed in part by a Bay Area resident.

Whale tail "ecoplates" were first introduced by the commission in 1997, and since then nearly 200,000 have been sold, raising more than $60 million for environmental conservation, commission spokeswoman Chris Parry said.    

The original featured artwork by famed marine life artist Robert Wyland. Parry said the commission decided to use a new design when Wyland asked for a 20 percent royalty on sales of the license plates in 2008.

"We really appreciate the donation of the original whale tail," Parry said. "It has served us really well. We're nothing but appreciative at this point."    

To hear about the request from the Wyland Foundation's perspective, click here to see Wyland Foundation Project Director Steve Creech's blog on Huffington Post. He wrote:

In 2008, however, in the midst of the U.S. economic meltdown, the foundation, like many others, had to scramble for resources. A logical request was made to the California Coastal Commission, which by this time, had raised more than $40 million from sales of its Wyland-designed Whale Tail license plate. Ten percent of these funds benefit environmental education.

After years of loaning the image to the state of California, Wyland made the apparently grave mistake of asking for a portion of the coastal commission whale tail proceeds to help fund environmental education programs through his Wyland Foundation (www.wylandfoundation.org) on an ongoing basis.

Or, more precisely, he asked the commission to support the type of programs that the whale tail plate was designed to fund. 

The commission held a contest to find new artists to design the new ecoplate. More than 300 artists submitted entries, and the commission on Tuesday revealed the winning design by Elizabeth Robinette Tyndall, a painter from Bethel Island in Contra Costa County, and Bill Atkins, a digital artist from Laguna Beach.          

Each artist received $1,000 as a prize. And this time around, the artists were required to sign releases, Parry said.          

The two artists worked together to create the new image using 
aspects from each of their designs. The final design was then refined by a graphic design team.          

The new plate is similar to the original, with a large humpback whale tail splashing in the ocean, although the new design features a bright, sunny sky with puffy white clouds in the background as opposed to Wyland's foggy sky.          

"It's been extremely successful and popular. We wanted to build on that rather than go in new direction," Parry said.    

The whale tail plates cost $50 the first year and $40 every year thereafter. The new plate is available at www.ecoplates.com.