Barnacle (on piling)

Description:

These Barnacles will cut the skin of swimmers who grab onto the piling (or anything else that sits in the water long enough to allow barnacles to attach). Barnacles attach with a cement-like permanency and filter feed for the rest of their lives. Barnacles will attach to other Barnacles, after a while, causing such masses of shells, that they can significantly slow a boat's streamline, and they can puncture smaller vessels that brush up against dock Barnacles.

Habitat:

Anything in salt water or brackish water. They can attach to - boat bottoms, doc pilings, ladders, ropes, large slow moving fish, crabs, other crustaceans, buoys, etc.