Flotsam 18-26 RBGPSW Blue plastic crate covered with goose barnacles washed ashore as flotsam at Rhossili Bay, Gower, South Wales, August 2008.
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Wow, that’s incredible!
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Thank you, Jo. It was an amazing sight and the animals were still alive and writhing around.
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Wow! Wow! Wow! What more can I say? Amazing 😊
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Beautiful
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Thank you, StillWalks.
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I could never imagine such a sight. It comes from another world all right.
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Goose barnacles are certainly odd-looking creatures. They only live attached to objects that float randomly in the sea. In the past some people have likened them to alien animals, and to fictional monsters from a popular sci-fi series. These ones were still alive. They could still shorten and lengthen their ‘stalks’; and the shells opened and closed while they thrust out and spread their appendages – as they would do in the water to capture small particles of passing food.
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That crate must have been in the water for a long time for such a colony to grow and thrive like that. I think that is a story in itself. It is like it became a little island, and a whole civilization grew up there, to be demolished when the island ran into difficulties and went into the wrong environment. Seems like a parable for our times, almost.
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You might like to know that with a bit of help we actually carried the crate and its colony back into the water so that it could float away again – with a bit of luck it continued to survive.
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I always remember my excitement when I first saw Goose barnacles washed up on the beach. It always fascinated me that in the UK (in the past) people only saw Barnacle Geese in winter, they and never saw them nest here so they thought Goose Barnacles was where these geese came from. (A bit like before Gilbert White they thought Swallows hibernated overwinter in caves)
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That makes my day to hear this. I really had the vision of it being like a little spaceship fallen to earth and I was dreading to hear everyone had died. I am thinking of them now (or their descendents) still in the ocean. Thank you.
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