The Speckled Clusters of Whale Barnacles

If this curious pattern looks familiar, perhaps it reminds you of something you’ve seen at the Sea Center on Stearns Wharf. The life-size model of an adult Gray Whale is speckled with clusters of whale barnacles. These are small invertebrates that hitch a ride on the world’s biggest vertebrates. As the whale swims, they filter-feed planktonic food floating in the passing water. The rostrum – snout, so to speak – of the whale at the Sea Center is especially barnacle encrusted, based on the appearances of Gray Whales studied by curators at Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. The barnacles in this picture are specimens preserved in alcohol in the Museum’s Collections and Research Center, which houses millions of specimens for scientific research. The barnacles were salvaged from a dead whale – and still adhere to a small piece of whale. So, does this jar belong in the Department of Invertebrate Zoology or the Department of Vertebrate Zoology?