Sausalito sea lion sculpture returns to waterfront

The piece, which was knocked off its pedestal in San Francisco Bay during storms last year, has been restored and reinstalled on an elevated base.

Sausalito’s iconic sea lion sculpture has been returned home, now stronger than ever.

The sea lion, which fell off its cement pedestal in January 2023 after some rough storms, has been restored. The sculpture, which weighs about a ton, was lifted by crane back to its spot on the shoreline at 6 a.m. Wednesday, marking the end of a year-and-a-half effort to return the creature to its customary habitat.

“It is an unsinkable sea lion,” said Rip Hunter of the Sausalito Foundation. “It is going to bring back a lot of the thrill people have enjoyed standing on the promenade looking out into the San Francisco Bay.”

The Sausalito Foundation spearheaded the fundraising campaign to restore the statue. The sculpture, located near 400 Bridgeway between Princess and Richardson streets, was designed by Al Sybrian in the 1950s and cast in bronze in 1966. It has fallen off its platform three times, according to Hunter.

This time, it went back in the water with some improvements to ensure it will last at least a 100 years or so. The concrete platform was built a foot higher to account for sea-level rise in the coming decades, and reinforced with fiberglass rebar. The restoration team learned that metal had been corroded by electrical currents.

“It was a pretty fun project from the standpoint of, how do we stop this 20-, 25-year cycle of this sea lion falling off of its perch and rolling around the rocks?” said Reason Bradley, the owner of Universal Sonar Mount, a business on the waterfront.

Bradley said the team laser-scanned the statue to get its volume and then calculated a way to put zinc anodes on the inside and outside to protect from corrosion. The anodes can be replaced every year.

“Hopefully after restoring it we can preserve the work that we’ve done and the sculpture hopefully indefinitely as long as the zincs are changed,” Bradley said.

The city contacted Bradley to help refurbish the sea lion, and he and his team have led the restoration. He said it has been fun to watch people check in to ask about the pinniped.

“Having been born and raised in Sausalito, it’s been wild to see how many people are excited and involved in the project,” Bradley said. “There’s a lot of people who feel connected to it.”

The platform will have a wooden mold around it for about a month until it cures. Regulations by the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission require that concrete does not run into the water.

“Right here in Sausalito’s Marinship we had the capability to design and build a new pedestal with sacrificial zincs and other environmentally appropriate technical features that promises to last a 100 years,” Sausalito Mayor Ian Sobieski said.

“As in a barn-raising, community donors, designers, fabricators and organizers have returned this beloved piece of art to the Sausalito waterfront,” he said. “We missed our sea lion. Welcome back!”