I didn’t spend a lot of time beach fossicking during last week’s visit to Weymouth but, when I was walking along the front towards Lodmoor one morning, I noticed a man kicking at something on the sand. My curiosity got the better of me so, when the man had walked on, I went down for a look. This is what I saw.

It looked like a very strange snake but was, in fact, a piece of thick rope covered in possibly hundreds of Goose barnacles (Lepas anatifera), something I’d never seen before in person but had seen in photos on social media. The Wildlife Trusts website provided the following information:

Barnacles are a type of crustacean, related to crabs and lobsters. Goose barnacles filter feed on plankton and detritus, capturing it from the water with their specially adapted legs. In many places in the world they are a delicacy – in fact, in days gone by, any ships arriving in Cornwall with goose barnacles on the hull were a real moneyspinner. The goose barnacles would be scraped from the hull and sold for food.

These Goose barnacles didn’t look the least bit appetising to me. There was no way to know how long they had been lying on the beach and I wasn’t even sure if they were alive or dead, but it was certainly interesting to finally see these creatures.