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Hairy Stowaway

While towing a phytoplankton net near the Vanuatu Islands for samples of the colonizing bacteria Trichodesium, researchers caught a straggler a barnacle attached to a floating piece of pumice. Though the barnacle did have much value to the research on the Western Pacific Warm Pool 2007 cruise, it did provide plenty of entertaining viewing under the dissecting microscope.

(Photo by Annette Hynes, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)