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accordion-style column of shell that burrows deeply into the callosity so it can hang on . The green color that Ishmael describes in Moby-Dick could be from algae growing on the shells of the barnacles and a tinge of the color of the skin callosity itself. Herman Melville was not the only person in the 1800s to return from a whaling voyage and write about the living bonnet of the right whale. In 1840 Frederick Bennett, an English surgeon and naturalist traveling on a whaleship, wrote that "the True-Whale [Right Whale] of the South ... has its body encrusted with barnacles and other parasites, often to the extent of resembling a rugged rock." In 1855 a whaleman sailing aboard the Clara Bell in the South Atlantic wrote this in his journal:
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you've seen a "beach flea" on the beach, you've seen an amphipod. Cyamids , usually pale grey, white, or orange, have five pairs of walking legs. Three of these pairs evolved to function like claws in order to dig and hook into the whale's skin. Cyamids are roughly the size of your fingernail.
Close-up view of the barnacles and cyamids on the callosity of a southern right whale, a.k.a. "sea candies."
The second type of animal living on the right whale's crown is a barnacle. Twenty or so species of "whale barnacles" live on all kinds of marine mammals, but the southern right whale is the only one of the three right whale species that regularly hosts barnacles on its callosities. The southern right whale is also the only species of baleen whale that we know with confidence that Melville saw up close during his time as a whaleman . He might have seen the lovely Tubicinella major barnacle, for example, which is common on the right whale. This barnacle builds an "SEA HISTORY FOR KIDS" IS SPONSORED BY THE HENRY L.
"The right whale is a very dirty mam[m]al compared to others of the same tribe. I have noticed they are covered with small insects very much resembling crabs-about half an inch in diameter. On the end of their nose is a bunch of barnacles about 18 inches wide. This the whalemen call his bonnet-and when you see a whale just rising out of water it has the appearance of a rock, the barnacles are enormous-as much as two inches deep-the boys often roast them and eat them the same as oysters." Right whales seek out enormous patches of zooplankton for food, and the attached barnacles feed off the smaller plankton that float around their hosts, while the cyamids primarily eat flakes of the whale's skin. Although there's no evidence that these barnacles and cyamids are actually parasites-meaning that they harm the whale-it is possible that either of these hitchhikers can introduce irritation and, just like on a boat, may, in large concentrations, reduce the whale's swimming efficiency. So when Herman Melville wrote in Moby-Dick of the right whale's "crown" or "bonnet," he was writing accurately, if poetically and humorously, about the barnacles and cyamids that colonize the callosities of living right whales. Now, if someone offers you sea candies to eat-you might want to be careful. For more "Animals in Sea History" go to www. seahistory.org, or educators.mysticseaport.org. ;t
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