‘Whale, what about that beach creation?’

There was a whale of a feeling down on Caroline Bay at the weekend, but without the blubber.

Hans Carpani, who recently returned home from the United Kingdom, spent a couple of days creating a large whale-like sculpture from driftwood and seaweed on the beach, a feat that attracted a good degree of attention.

‘‘I just found a piece of wood that looked like a pectoral fin. I laid it out on the beach with other pieces of wood, and it slowly evolved,’’ he explained.

Carpani started with an outline in the sand and spent hours collecting and arranging seaweed and driftwood for the unusual installation.

Two days later a beached whale could be seen. It spent the weekend lying majestically on the sands at the southern end of Caroline Bay, resisting anything the tides could throw at it.

Finding a suitable bit of driftwood for the spine was difficult, Carpani said..

‘‘I found one hell of a piece of wood but it was too heavy for me to lift. I had to edge it bit by bit down the beach’’.

After hours of scouring the beach, Carpani eventually ran out of materials to completely finish the lookalike whale, but that suited the passionate animal lover.

‘‘The final structure looks more like a decaying whale, simply because I ran out of seaweed to cover it,’’ he said.

A vegan who is deeply concerned about animal welfare, especially the plight of whales, Carpani is concerned about protecting our natural environment and said the decaying whale was a more fitting depiction of the plight of the sea.

Carpani has created numerous abstract forms on beaches and forests in Portugal and England, where he has lived, and freestanding stone towers on Rhosilli Beach in South Wales.

It was not something he set out to do, Carpani said.. ‘‘There’s no real reason for it, really. It’s not something I aim to do, it just happens, but only when the mood takes me,’’ he said.