| OCR Text |
Show Barnacle, Enemy of Ships, Born With One Eye, Grows Armor Prison Shipbuilders and ship owners and operators have been waging an undeclared un-declared but partially successful war against the barnacle ever since ships have sailed on salt water. "Sticks like a barnacle" means something real in the case of ships, for millions of this peculiar little sea animal dig themselves into ships' bottoms, slowing up the vessels' ves-sels' speed and costing a great deal of money to exterminate. A 12-month growth of barnacles on a ship of 10,000 deadweight tons may average as much as 30 tons. Maritime law wisely requires that all ships must go into dry dock every 12 months for bottom cleaning clean-ing and barnacle removing. The barnacle is a scientific marvel. mar-vel. It is a sea animal, smaller than your thumb. If you pull a barnacle bar-nacle from the hull of a ship you will probably destroy the shell. The legs of the barnacle are not visible when the creature is out of the water wa-ter for they are withdrawn into the shell. The healthy barnacle is equipped with six pairs of legs, curly, frond-like affairs. Most species of the barnacle are male and female combined. Consequently, Con-sequently, it is safer to refer to a barnacle as it. Born as a tiny larva, lar-va, it is not a pretty child. It has one eye and three pair of spidery appendages. In a day or so it develops de-velops a bivalve shell, two eyes and legs. At the end of this time, it settles down, becomes a permanent resident, resi-dent, firmly cements itself to the body of a whale, a piece of driftwood drift-wood or the hull of a ship. Once the barnacle is settled down, it throws off the shell, loses its eyes and starts to grow a new armor in which it will be a lifelong prisoner. |
