Goose Barnacles

Apparently Goose Barnacles have a sweet taste like Razor Clams. They’re filter feeders which grow on rocks or on flotsam and have a combination of a fleshy stalk called a peduncle and a shell covering their frondy filters. This group is thriving on one of the many pieces of plastic rubbish set adrift on the ocean rather than their natural habitat of driftwood.

This lot have come ashore on the west side of Westray.

Just one small tin of Goose Barnacles costs £22.95. The tinned Galician delicacy comes with instructions to only eat the peduncle, and not the flesh inside the shell as that’s ‘the Galician way’. Handily, they come prepared in the tin and peduncle has already had the skin removed.

I’m wondering how fresh these are? Any thought of eating them soon disappears, though, as Anna the dog comes and does a wee on them.