How Do Barnacles Attach to Whales?
It’s hard out there for a symbiotic barnacle, but somehow they find a way
Mara Grunbaum • March 22, 2010
For a hungry barnacle, the rim of a baleen whale’s nostril isn’t a terrible place to be. When the whale swims through a cloud of plankton for a meal, the barnacle — which also feeds on the tiny, floating organisms — gets free table service. All it has to do is extend its feathery, filtering arm and wait.
Barnacles regularly colonize the skin of filter-feeding whales, and they often do so in huge numbers — one humpback whale, for instance, can host almost 1,000 pounds of barnacles. (That may sound burdensome, but relative to a humpback’s nearly 80,000-pound body, it’s about as much extra weight as summer clothing on a human being.)
Whale-bound barnacles aren’t just regular barnacles with wanderlust; they’re different species, most of them unique to the brand of whale they piggyback on. The barnacle Coronula diadema lives only on humpback whale skin, for example, while gray whales host one called Cryptolepas rhachianecti.¹
So how does a barnacle get onto a whale in the first place? Like other stationary marine invertebrates, barnacles begin their lives as larvae — tiny, shell-less swimmers that find a place to settle and develop into the sturdy barnacles we know. Easy enough when all you want to stick to is an immobile rock, but a whale?
“We don’t really know how they’re doing it,” said John Zardus, a marine biologist at The Citadel military college in Charleston, South Carolina. For the last six years, Zardus has studied the barnacles that live on various marine animals, including whales. “These microscopic larvae that are swimming around in this huge ocean — how do they find a whale? … It just seems preposterous, actually.”
Research on whale barnacles is scarce, according to Zardus, because they’re not the easiest beasts to get a hold of. The larvae are small and difficult to distinguish from other kinds of barnacle larvae, and the adults are so deeply embedded in the skin of their hosts that they have to be carved out, flesh and all. Zardus only gets samples to study when there’s a dead, stranded whale he can take a chunk from — but if he takes too long to get to it, the barnacles will be dead, too.
Marine biologists speculate that the barnacles reproduce during the whales’ breeding season, when the whales mill around in warm, shallow waters rather than moving through the open ocean. If that’s true, Zardus said, the whales would swim in a thick soup of larvae; each barnacle parent can release anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 spawn, and they survive for several weeks in the water. When a whale does swim by, research suggests, the drifting larvae pick up a chemical signal that tells them to hop on.²
There’s plenty of space to squat on a whale, but barnacles are picky. They like spots where the flow of water is consistent, Zardus explained, like the head or the fins. So instead of settling wherever they land, the larvae use their front antennae to “walk” around the whale in search of prime real estate. And that’s no easy stroll: if a barnacle larva were the size of a person, a whale would be over 20 miles long. Luckily, the larvae produce a sticky cement that keeps them from falling off into the ocean during their trek.
“They may walk over the whale for a long time until they find the place they’re looking for,” Zardus said. “It’s not random.”
Once they’re satisfied with their location, the barnacles dig in — literally. As they mature into adults, they form tube-shaped cavities in their shells that actually draw in prongs of growing whale skin. The result is an attachment as firmly rooted as the most pernicious weed.
Coronula diadema barnacles embedded in a piece of humpback whale skin. [Credit: Adolf Seilacher, Yale University Department of Geology and Geophysics.]
The barnacle-whale relationship is generally considered to be obligate commensalism — a type of symbiosis where one species benefits, and the other isn’t affected either way. Still, it’s possible that too many barnacles could cause drag, Zardus said, or invite infection if they penetrate too deeply into the whale’s flesh. On the other hand, it’s been suggested that for male humpbacks, who fight over females by ramming and slapping at each other, a sharp barnacle coating may be helpful as a set of brass knuckles.
¹ The uniqueness of whale barnacle species means that whaling and whale habitat loss put not only the whales at risk, but also their hitchhiking companions, said Dan Rittschof, a Duke University marine biologist who has studied barnacles for over 30 years.
“If you’re an endangered whale,” Rittschof said, “then everything that lives on you, like a barnacle, is also endangered.”
² In 2005, in one of the rare laboratory experiments on whale barnacles, Japanese environmental scientists Yasuyuki Nogata and Kiyotaka Matsumura placed Coronula diadema larvae in Petri dishes of seawater — some alone, and some with a slice of whale skin. The larvae by themselves floated around until they died, but the ones near the whale skin started settling on the surface of the dish.
“The settlement cue appears to be released [into the water] from the tissue of the host whale,” the researchers wrote in a March 2006 paper in Biology Letters. The exact nature of the chemical cue, however, remains unknown.
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About the Author
Mara Grunbaum
Mara Grunbaum studied English and environmental science at NYU. Before returning to New York, she worked for several years as a freelance reporter in Portland, Oregon, where she wrote about local politics, poverty and social justice. As a science reporter, she’s most interested in biology, ecology and most anything having to do with the ocean. You can also read her blog or follow her on Twitter.
40 Comments
Amazing and intriguing!
Do the barnacles itch? They look like they would irritate or itch the whale…
We got the largest barnacles I’ve ever seen at our lobster dock in Gloucester yesterday. they were HUGE
I never knew there was a fleshy animal living inside the razor sharp barnacle enclosures. In many of the pictures I included a quarter so you can get an idea of the scale of these humongous creatures. I also got some pretty decent video of the creatures opening their enclosures and the organism alive coming in and out of it. It’s straight out of Aliens.
You can see the pics I took of it here-
http://goodmorninggloucester.wordpress.com/2010/06/23/the-largest-barnacles-ive-ever-seen-in-all-my-years-at-the-dock/
i want to feel the barnacles and i want to take one home
Do grey whales use barnacles as a defense against orca attacks?
This is so disgusting…
Can orcas get them? I don’t remember them being so familiar on that species skin or body.
Totally random Google search after I saw “crust” on these poor whales, so thanks for the great article. Wish there was a way to help these lovely creatures get these hitchhhikers off their backs.
I found this most interesting…thank you. Just goes to show, what looks so uncomfortable to we humans isn’t necessarily so for these gentle giants of the oceans.
This is horrible! We need to help these whales and get these things OUT of their flesh.
Seeing this stuff drives me crazy and makes me itch all over! I’d love to remove each one from that whale :/
Completely agree with the people who are totally repulsed by these carpets of barnacles completely covering a whale’s head, belly, or whatever its huge back flipper is called. If you do an IMAGE search of “whale barnacles,” you will see such huge infestations that you want to sandblast the poor whale where it is covered, or use some kind of giant squeegee to scrape off layers of barnacles and roll them up like round hay bales and let them fall to the ocean floor! I spent hours looking at pictures and creasing about whale barnacles and lice yesterday, and I couldn’t sleep last night because I was tortured by the feeling that I must have head lice! I agree these things are gross and horrible, and think that people who find them beautiful are weird! The sight of these shells embedded into whale skin by the billions makes my skin crawl! One picture showed a sea turtle so covered in barnacles that he drowned because they were so heavy and hampered his swimming so much that he could not come up for air. Horrible, evil crustaceans…..Ugggh! Apparently they cause no harm to the whales, but they look like the must itch terribly. Like those pods in “Aliens,” I just want to blow-torch them!
I know that it is a symbiotic relationship between endangered whales and the barnacles, but the thought that the barnacles could settle in places that could cause great harm to the whales causes me great distress, it definately seems like something out of science fiction!
Those poor whales! I hate those barnacles. And what if they attach to the whales balls?
why would they do that to the poor innocent whales?????????
i am so glad i am not a whale
I can’t believe it! Why would those barnacles want to irritate the poor endangered animal!
Ouch, I wouldn’t want to be any kind of sea creature. -shudder-
@Grub
Lol, you described this so thoroughly that I could roll over and die laughing. In a word I think what you and many feel is called “disgust”. Yeah they can be pretty unsettling… they are like aliens. Ick. Although, it might be worth it to try not to be too grossed out because they have their value; between moderating the amount of small organisms in the ocean, to being delicacies on a plate. Just like wasps and bees and other creatures (particularly the small ones in big numbers, like ants) they have some disadvantage attached to their presence.
Poor whale? The whales don’t care people. Sheesh. Read the article
Wow, they kinda remind me of pimples…..Does that HURT?
Mitch, this article DID say that too many barnacles can be a problem.
I am bothered by these insidious opportunistic barnacles, too. It must be in our genetic make up to clean away things like this. I always killed off the red fox (?) that followed Sonic the Hedgehog -lol. If I could, I would burn the meaty bit of the barnacle, and, hopefully, it would fall off the poor sea creatures.
How can baby whales snuggle up to their parents without getting lacerated by the razor-sharp edges of these horrible alien parasites?
I don’t understand how anyone can think that whales don’t mind having these things burrowing into their skin for the whole of their lives. Whales are mammals with mammal skin like ours, so of course it must hurt them terribly, as it would any mammal. Which daft scientist decided that “whales don’t mind it”? This is not commensalism, it is horrific parasitism.
It’s funny how everyone’s getting upset at the barnacles ‘harming’ the whales, yet no one bats an eyelid at the poor barnacle larvae that are literally dying as a result of not clinging onto whales. It’s very selfish and hyprocritcal to be concerned for the welfare of one animal (the cute one) and not of another (the nasty one).
Wow guys, maybe you should read or at the bare minimum /think/ before posting some of these ridiculous opinions.
1) These are not parasites. They are not harming their hosts, and they are a valid part of the open ocean ecosystem, just like the whales. Whale skin is very, very thick, and to the whales, these are little more than tattoos.
2) Sandblasting a whale or otherwise scooping out these barnacles would result in the death or severe injury of the whale. I have a whale barnacle shell sitting on my desk; it’s about two inches deep, and the very top of the shell is the only part that is exposed. It would be more like pulling teeth.
Opinions based on how you feel are merely inadequate here. People harm wildlife and ecosystems every minute because they act based on how they feel or because they are anthropomorphizing the animals/plants involved. Whales are utterly unlike humans, and the only thing we really have in common is a degree of intelligence and endothermy. Whale skin is very thick and the barnacles are not causing harm.
Finally, I’m an ecology major who is close to completing his degree. I have the knowledge and soon I will have the authority to tell most of you that you are /idiots/ with harmful opinions, so good luck disproving my assertions.
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@Xenoplasm: nobody has authority to provide opinion and facts. The authority is within you – do not let the disease of “must be an expert”, or “must have a degree” group think deter from offering facts.
There are actually 3 animals involved in this commensal relationship. I disagree with the author as to there being no benefit to the whale from the barnacles. A second parasite lives on the whales, called whale lice. These small crab like creatures find refuge from being washed off the moving whale in the calm area between clusters of barnacles. The whale lice cling to the whale skin with two pincers similar to crab claws, but much smaller. These claws are extremely sharp and strong.
The whale benefits from having the whale lice ONLY when the whale has an injury. The whale lice move to the wound and eat the wounded flesh, thus keeping that healing flesh from getting infected. This is a 3 way beneficial relationship with all three benefiting from one of the others.
At least that is my personal theory about whale barnacles.
Also, I believe the author meant to say that gray whales may have up to 1000 pounds of barnacles on them, not humpbacks.
I have barnacles on my hat XD
You’re free willy
This, an occurrence in nature isn’t open to judgement. Unsightly or not isn’t important, as it’s not thought to be secondary to human interference, simply “normal flora” on whales, I say let it be. Consequently, human interference in nature, even with best intentions has proved decimating. ie, the introduction of various insect and wildlife species to areas that isn’t their natural dwelling in order to control something else. The thought we should have a part of regulating, or changing mother nature is a mistake, so what the occurrence is unsightly?
This line of comments on this article are fascinating, how the human animal is so much more bothered by this than the whale is. The burning intensity sounds like a trypophobia disgust response to the mental image of flesh-barnacles. (How do people feel about images of dried lotus seed heads?)
Whales probably are grossed out and pity us poor hairy primates with mites crawling around in the sockets of our hair follicles.
Dear people saying that they would love to see the barnacles get off these “poor” whales,
Please read the article. It says that the barnacles are not proven to cause any harm and are in a harmless symbiotic relationship with the whale. The problem presented is not the barnacles on the whale, but that humans are intervening with wildlife and depleting the population of whales, causing not only the whales to become endangered but the barnacles who depend on them for food to become endangered as well. Both the animals in question’s only problem is humans!!
Please do not be part of the problem saying that barnacles need to be removed. They are not “crust”, they are not “disgusting”, they are are harmless living things who just so happen to depend on whales. Calm down, leave nature alone, and focus on problems that exist please.
I go whale watching and have seen the whales come close and even let humans with broomsticks scrape the barnacles off. They must itch terribly. There is video on YouTube of a whale scraping itself against a boat to try to dislodge them. Don’t tell me these awful things aren’t PARASITES
I’m here in 2020
I’m here in 2020 hehe
I loved reading all these comments. I too am grossed out by Barnacles habitating and thriving on whale skin which is why I searched for some information about them. I think the barnacles are not only unsightly, but, there is a real possibility that they are a nuisance to the whale. I am all for leaving nature alone most of the time but sometimes it is very advantageous for man to help, as nature can be quite cruel…ever see a poor stray dog covered in maggots and ticks? I have watched many nature videos on youtube of people helping animals whether it’s taking care of poor malnourished dogs, horses or other mammals or providing water holes for wild animals. Man is capable of aiding animals in ways that they can’t help themselves, so why not try? For instance, if there is evidence of whales trying to scrape off the barnacles along the smooth edge of a boat, then perhaps building plastic structures in parts of calm waters where they breed like Baja California might be a wonderful idea…so that they can safely scrape off their own barnacles, or perhaps, if whale watchers were given stiff brooms on whale watching excursions, they could all pitch in to get rid of the barnacles that are not that deep in the skin. I have watched videos of fisherman cleaning poor turtles covered in barnacles, why not poot whales? I am not disagreeing that there might be some benefit to the barnacles or whale lice, but it might also cause them pain, irritation or harm. I have a hard time with know it all ‘professionals’ who think just because they study nature that they alone should offer opinions or make judgement calls. I wish I had a dollar for every ‘professional’ that has been proven wrong and has made horrific mistakes, because I would be filthy rich! I think all people who are concerned should ‘pitch in’ with ideas to help these wonderful sea creatures!
I’m pretty sure that barnacles itch, there is evidence of whales trying to scrape barnacles off, I think more research is needed before statements like “whales are not affected” or “t’s about as much extra weight as summer clothing for humans”, just imagine carrying a “summer clothing” load of parasites in your skin that occasionally cause infections…
It’s midnight and I’m reading about barnacles and how they attach to whales. I’m not even high.
I just want to second Ben Dover, above.
Found this article searching about whether barnacles help make humpback fins edges sharp, making orca attacks more vicious, and the article did help answer my question. And the comments are wonderful, thank you all!