Goose Barnacle

Goose barnacles, also called stalked barnacles, are filter-feeding crustaceans with a fleshy stalk, one end connected to an armored capitulum and the other used to attach to substrates such as intertidal rocks, flotsam or larger animals. Their resemblance to the appendages of other creatures has earned them many regional names: in Iberia the species Pollicipes pollicipes is culinarily important and called percebes, the closely related Pollicipes polymerus is known in North America as the gooseneck or leaf barnacle, and Capitulum mitella, eaten in Asia, is called the turtle hand barnacle in Japan.