Marty’s photo of the day #5166: Deb and I have traveled all seven continents looking for rare and interesting wildlife and have seen creatures that look like they should be from another planet. These pelagic gooseneck barnacles, which Deb found as we were walking a beach on Vancouver Island, are the strangest creatures we’ve ever seen. It was like they were one part leech, one part clam, and one part creature from a science-fiction movie. Then, when I knelt down to photograph them, they opened their shells and waved their feathery cirri! I immediately thought “Little Shop of Horrors.”
Pelagic gooseneck barnacles aren’t rare, but this colony was out of place. They are filter feeders that attach themselves to floating items like the piece of driftwood this one was on. They are typically found in tropical and subtropical seas worldwide, but, like this colony, are sometimes carried into colder seas by currents. Around Vancouver Island they could survive, but it would be too cold for them to reproduce.
One more thing: In medieval times, people thought these barnacles turned into barnacle geese because no one knew where the geese migrated.