LOOK: Right Whale Ice Sculpture On Display Outside New England Aquarium

BOSTON (CBS) -- There's a cool new addition outside the New England Aquarium. An incredible ice sculpture of a mother right whale and her baby is now on display.

It's all to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the aquarium's right whale research program. The sculpture is 16 feet long and 6-and-a-half feet tall.

Don Chapelle of Brilliant Ice Sculpture in Lawrence formed the whales out of 40 blocks of ice that each weighed 350 pounds.

Last summer, a global conservation group determined that North Atlantic Right Whales are "critically endangered," with only about 400 believed to still be in existence. But the aquarium says there is "guarded optimism" as 15 calves have been spotted off the southern coast of the United States, "more than the number born in a single winter since 2016."

The aquarium reopened to the public on Feb. 5 after museums and other cultural institutions in the city had to shut down due to a coronavirus surge.