Happy New Year! 2016 has started with a blowout as the North Atlantic winter bought another south westerly storm through the Solent. Along with the usual debris that have crashed upon our shores in recent weeks, a number exotic visitors from further away have arrived and given us a peak into a world we don't often get to see up close.
These alien looking creatures aren't from a new Sci-Fi film, they're actually Goose Barnacles. Although often washed ashore in the winter, they live in dense colonies attached to floating debris out in the ocean. In the water, each 'barnacle' uses filamentous cirri to feed on passing plankton whilst their thick stalks (or Peduncles) attach them firmly to their floating home. There are several different species but this one, Lepas anatifera, grows to about 5cm over the course of a few months.
Above: My hand for size. The peduncles feel just like wet earthworms..
Clumps of Goose Barnacles have been washing up on the shoreline around the the eastern Solent since at least December this year with colonies being deposited in Southsea, Langstone Harbour Mouth, Hayling Island beach and East Head amongst other sites locally.
Above: Goose Barnacles washed up on a buoy at Langstone Harbour Mouth (Photo by Louise MacCallum)
Just how far have these oceanic voyagers traveled to reach our shores? It's not an easy question to answer with accuracy for most finds but some can be traced more easily than others. For example, part of a Space-X rocket, which launched cargo to the international space station from Cape Canaveral in Florida in September 2014 before falling into the sea, arrived at the Scilly Isles covered in a dense colony of goose barnacles earlier in December. From the much smaller colonies we've seen locally, at least one was attached to a buoy originating in North America as well, showing just how interconnected we all are as Atlantic neighbours.
Above: A colony of Goose Barnacles ashore at East Head (Photo by Fred Ellis)
What about the name though? In a very different era long before the enlightenment, some medieval naturalists asserted that these colony's were the origin of Barnacle Geese. We know now that they migrate from their breeding grounds in the north like Greenland, but at the time, this knowledge was completely hidden from the inhabitants of their wintering quarters. Don't take my word for it though, I'll allow the dark age scholar Gerald of Wales to tell you all about it via his 1118AD text Topographia Hibernica (the topography of Ireland):
There are likewise here many birds called barnacles,(barnacle geese) which nature produces in a wonderful manner, out of her ordinary course. They resemble the marsh-geese, but are smaller. Being at first, gummy excrescenses from pine-beams floating on the waters, and then enclosed in shells to secure their free growth, they hang by their beaks, like seaweeds attached to the timber. Being in progress of time well covered with feathers, they either fall into the water or take their flight in the free air, their nourishment and growth being supplied, while they are bred in this very unaccountable and curious manner, from the juices of the wood in the sea-water. I have often seen with my own eyes more than a thousand minute embryos of birds of this species on the seashore, hanging from one piece of timber, covered with shells, and, already formed. No eggs are laid by these birds after copulation, as is the case with birds in general; the hen never sits on eggs to hatch them; in no corner of the world are they seen either to pair or to build nests.
Above: Almost ready to hatch into a Barnacle Goose...
Back in the present day Solent, our modern day Brent Geese are continuing to feed up for the long journey ahead back to their breeding grounds in Siberia come the spring. Recent counts continue to confirm that last year was a very poor breeding season for them with only a handful of young amongst the flocks. Nevertheless, with the new year now entrenched, let's hope it holds better fortune for them.