Gooseneck Barnacles

Gooseneck barnacles are filter-feeding crustaceans that lives attached to hard surfaces of rocks and flotsam in the ocean intertidal zone. They are easily recognizable by their distinctive long and muscular stalk, which is edible and is considered a delicacy in several Mediterranean countries.

Some species of gooseneck barnacles are pelagic and are most frequently found on tidewrack on oceanic coasts. Unlike most other types of barnacles, intertidal gooseneck barnacles depend on water motion rather than the movement of their cirri for feeding, and are therefore found only on exposed or moderately exposed coasts. In Spain and Portugal they are known as percebes and there is a percebes festival in Galicia (on Spain’s Atlantic coast) every summer.