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A mysterious creature horrified holidaymakers after it washed up on a beach on the Gower Peninsula in Wales. The writhing mass of tentacles, which measured at least 6ft from end to end. The barnacles � long writhing stalks or pendulates, tipped with shells � are normally found deep below the waves, but were washed up clinging to a log. This barnacle may look like a mollusc but it is in fact a crustacean related to shrimps, lobsters and crabs. The goose barnacle or percebe thrives at the ocean�s foamy edge. Slammed by boiling sea waves, laved in saline by constant saltwater surf, the percebe thrives clinging to wave-lashed crags of the sea, to coastal rocks in narrow inlets called �surge channels� up which the ocean thrusts oxygen-rich waves tumbling and roiling to wash over the barnacle colonies, thus providing tiny planktonic food to be caught by the winnowing fan-like legs poking out and up from the barnacle. Barnacles attach themselves to rocks by their �heads� and feed by means of their feathery �legs.�