Prunedale’s Randy Puckett is a stickler for detail – it’s the only way he knows to make his massive sculptures look like live cetaceans in their natural ocean environment.

He undertakes some surprising tasks to do it, like peering into dead whales: Puckett jumped at opportunities to check out necropsies performed on several gray whales and a minke whale that once washed up on Zmudowski State Beach in Moss Landing. He insists on knowing the whale inside and out.

“The closer I get to them,” he says, “the more inspired I become to show complete anatomical accuracy.”

When there are no washed-up whales to be found, Puckett prefers to look beneath the surface.

“I use personal encounters and field studies with whales from my years of snorkeling in Hawaii to study movement and overall feeling,” Puckett says. “I also use video and film images like still photography to study smaller details. My principal aim is to make people aware of what these whales look like, what they do, and how they do it.”

He’s dived with research biologists and humpback whales, been within 50 feet of a blue whale, observed river dolphins in the Orinoco and spotted sperm whales in the North Pacific (and the Sea of Cortez).

Anybody who’s ever walked into the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Hall of Mammals has seen the products of Puckett’s method. It would be difficult to miss the life-sized replicas of gray whales and orcas suspended from the ceiling. His sculptures have made their home at Monterey Bay Aquarium since its doors opened in 1984 – or rather, before it even had doors.

“The sculptures were so large that they required careful and very slow transport from a construction site in Sand City to Cannery Row,” he says. “A crane was used to lift the whales into the then wall-less building. Once the transport reached Cannery Row, our procession literally became a parade.”

~ ~ ~

Puckett had what he calls the “Eureka!” moment decades ago. It was the 1950s in Southern California when he carved a whale out of beech-wood for his son. When someone offered to buy the carving, he realized he could make a living with his hobby.

Puckett has lived locally for more than 40 years, and says he owes much of his success to living in Monterey County. “Living and working here is essential,” he says. “Not only are there tremendous artist communities like Pacific Grove, Carmel, Big Sur and Monterey, but after I opened a shop on Cannery Row about 35 years ago selling my sculptures, I was fortunate enough to meet some people from Hopkins Marine Station.” That led to more opportunities to study local marine life.

Not all of his work is as large as the Aquarium pieces – or others featured in over a dozen institutes around the world, including one at Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., of a 40-foot gray and her calf. But regardless of scale, each work speaks to his obsession for accuracy. A 20-inch sculpture of a humpback, “The Song,” includes every bump, groove and curve of the massive mammal. Puckett also studies pictures – of a beluga blowhole, or of the grooves in a humpback’s “armpit.”

“Twenty or 30 years ago, there were virtually no underwater images of whales,” he says. “With modern technology, I can be as honest as I can in portraying these creatures.”

In 1988, The Ocean Research Foundation awarded him the John Stoneman Award for his “outstanding contributions toward the better understanding and appreciation of the marine environment.” For years, Puckett has allowed buyers and collectors to donate a quarter of the sculpture’s price to an environmental charity of their choice; he provides a list of dozens of worthy marine conservation charities (a personal favorite is the American Cetacean Society Monterey Bay Chapter). And he’ll gladly take care of the details for any buyer.

“If we don’t take care of this place – which we haven’t exactly screwed up, yet, although we seem to be trying – nobody will do it for us. If I can make my work available to people who are interested in marine conservation, then I’m happy.”

Surrounded by bronze statues at his self-built solar powered home/studio, he adds this: “If we somehow lose the whales, then we must have really messed up. What happens to our marine life is a direct commentary on our environmental well-being.”

For more of Randy Puckett’s work, visit www.randypuckett.com