An extraordinary sight on the beach, with a large log washed up absolutely covered with Goose barnacles (Lepas anatifera). As one viewing child said "It looks like something out of 'Dr Who'!". The Western Mail carried a front page story on it (http://www.walesonline.co.uk/showbiz-and-lifestyle/showbiz/2009/08/04/tentacled-sea-monster-or-doctor-who-alien-91466-24307825/), followed by the Daily Mail (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1204196/Dr-Who-like-monster-stuns-sunbathers-washes-Welsh-beach.html). Also in The Sun (http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2571619/Mysterious-creature-emerges-from-sea-in-Wales.html) and the Daily Mirror (http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/pictures/2009/08/04/the-latest-news-pics-3rd-9th-august-115875-21571043/). It is worth pointing out that the poor, old barnacles are hardly 'a monster' (being only dangerous to plankton and over-weight Spaniards- they are a delicacy in Spain) and that the 'tentacles' are the peduncle or 'foot' by which they are attached to the log. Went back to Oxwich with BBC journalists to film a small item for Welsh news. Many of the barnacles had died but the whole section of wood was much bigger than I had thought being around 5 m in length. I got to repeatedly recount the story of the C12th monk Giraldus Cambrensis who claimed to have seen (too much mead or simply a poor Biologist?) Barnacle geese hatch from these barnacles. This is the reason that these geese were reclassified as 'fish', enabling Catholics to eat them on a friday or even over Lent. I later heard that other pieces of wood with attached barnacles were washed up at beaches at Broughton, Nicholaston and Three Cliffs (the 2 pieces at this last location were respectively about 3 and 2.3 m in length). 
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