Whale barnacle

Coronula diadema

Whale barnacle

CMNPA 1999-0022

These egg to fist sized crustaceans are found on humpback whales (and reported from fin, blue, and sperm whales) especially on the lips, the long grooves of the throat and the genital region.

C.Iburg

Barnacles begin their lives as free-swimming larvae, but appear able to ‘smell’ a nearby whale when ready to settle down. They then develop the heavy calcium-rich plates that shield the barnacle’s soft body (now lost in this specimen). As the plates fuse together, the whale’s skin is drawn into the spaces between the plates, permanently stitching the barnacle’s shell to the whale. Even though the barnacle may only live for one to two years, the whale carries the shell around until it can find a way to scrape it off.

C.Iburg

Luckily, the barnacles only attach to the surface layer of the whale’s very thick skin and blubber layer. They don’t harm the whale, just hitchhike through the plankton-rich water that the whales enjoy.

Another specimen

Diplogonoporus balaenopterae (Lönnberg, 1891) from Balaenoptera acutirostrata (Minke whale)
CMNPA 1999-0008

c. Iburg

This is a tapeworm that is often found in the small intestine of minke and sei whales but can also infect dogs and people who eat uncooked infected whale meat or fish (which might carry the larval stages of many parasites.) Like many parasites, tapeworms use different members of a food chain to foster and pass along the various life stages of the worm. The eggs of Diplogonoporus, shed in the feces of the whale, are eaten and hatch within small crustaceans called copepods, which are then eaten by small fish, later sieved out of the water by baleen whales such as the minke.

C. Iburg