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Goose Neck Barnacle
Pollicipes sp.
9.23852, -83.8494
Field Notes
Description:
From Wikipedia: Pollicipes pollicipes grows in groups on rocks, as well as on the hulls of shipwrecks and on driftwood. It is a filter feeder, living on particles that it can glean from the water passing over its extended cirri; these possess a complex assortment of setae, enabling P. pollicipes to have a varied diet, including diatoms, detritus, large crustaceans, copepods, shrimp and molluscs.
The larvae pass through seven free-swimming stages (six nauplii and one cypris) over the course of at least a month. After this time, they settle into the adult, sessile form.
P. pollicipes is harvested for consumption in many parts of its range, mostly for the Spanish market, where it may sell for as much as €90 per kilogram. As a result, the species is thought to be in decline. It is harvested manually, and archaeological evidence suggests that the species has been harvested in this way for over 10,000 years.
Habitat:
From Wikipedia: Pollicipes pollicipes is chiefly distributed from 48°N to 28°N, along the coasts of France, Spain (including the Canary Islands), Portugal, Morocco, and south to Senegal, with a further population disjunctly located around the tropical Cape Verde Islands at about 16°N. The periphery of the species' range also extends as far north as the British Isles, with outlying populations on the south coast of England and possibly in southwestern Ireland, although there are no recent records there. The species is present, but rare, in the Mediterranean Sea. It is possible that the outlying populations are not self-sustaining, being instead maintained by immigration of larvae from self-sustaining core populations.
Notes:
Found this today when I was out jogging on the beach. Thought it was a interesting shell formation. I picked it up and saw that it was actually alive. At each tip, there is a creature and in the picture you can see a few emerging. They never came out, perhaps because I was hovering over them. Anyways, it or they (not sure) had a weird texture, like fish skin or something. So before I threw it back into the ocean I ran and grabbed my camera, posed it in the rocks, and snapped away. Later when I return to my cabina, my landlord, who is a Tica, recognized the picture and gave me some Spanish name for it. She also said they eat them! Yikes!
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