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– Never underestimate barnacles. According to researchers in Australia, they might be able to help track down people lost at sea. Types of the Remove anserifera goose mussel genus are among the most common found in biofouling, a fancy word for the accumulation of organisms on a surface, and “ play an important role in biofouling communities as basic species, ” said a study in Marine biologyTo find out more, researchers at the University of New South Wales observed how the barnacles and other creatures attached to floating and fixed objects for six months. The Release, which only adhere to floating objects, showed an average daily growth rate of 1.055 mm per day, which was higher than the fastest daily growth rate observed in previous research in the 1940s, and a highest daily growth rate of about 1.45 mm per day, per day. a release. That’s not as unimportant as it may sound.
When a fisherman goes missing and washes up the debris from his boat, ‘we can measure and count Release (in addition to counting those other amphipods, if any) to give a minimum estimate for how long that debris floated around, ” explains lead author Thomas Mesaglio. In addition, experts can reconstruct ‘the sea surface temperature they experienced while stuck to the debris’. by performing an isotope analysis of the barnacles. Researchers say this can be used to map potential drift patterns. All of this is hypothetical. However, co-author Iain Suthers says the calculations suggest the 36mm Release found on debris from missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 that washed up off the coast of Madagascar 16 months after the plane disappeared in 2014 “were much younger than previously thought” and likely formed “nowhere near the crash site.” (Read more discovery stories.)