Hi everybody. This is Ellen Weatherford with just the Zoo of Us. And today I'm talking to a brand new friend. This is Elizabeth Mills. Say hi, Elizabeth. Hi, everyone. I'm really excited. I'm excited to talk to you and I'm excited to talk about barnacles today. But I'm going to have to contain that enthusiasm for just a minute.

So before we talk about barnacles, let's talk about you. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Yeah, so I'm a marine biologist from England, and I'm a PhD student at the moment, and I started

in marine biology. I love rock-palling and everything to do with the sea and the coast,

being in marine biologist, of course. And I also study all the things that grow in rock pools,

which are kind of the areas right on the coast with all these wonderful, underrated, lovely

species, including the amazing barnacles. I love to study also what grows on man-made surfaces, which is kind of all

the same stuff, but we put so much structures into our seas that it really interests me about all the

different things that grows on them and where we put them and how, you know, humans interact with

the ocean. And so I've also kind of moved into engineering. So right now I'm a PhD student

in civil engineering,

but looking at what grows on concrete and trying to make a new concrete to get different species

to grow on it. So that is what I am up to at the moment. Wow. Oh, that's really cool because

like when I think of barnacles, I do think of them being stuck to like docks and stuff like that.

Is that where you typically find them?

Yeah, and on the bottom of ships, and they're really sick on everything. They're kind of like the big

biofowling species, which just works hand in hand with me. I mean, I'm not saying I followed them

through into that zone. It was a big contributing factor to me going into doing biofounding studies.

So when they're not stuck on to man-made stuff, where are you going to find them in the ocean?

You can find them from the deep sea right up to floating on bits of wood through the ocean to the intertidal area.

There's even like different species that love to live on the rocky shore. They live in the top like two meters. Then the next, you know, couple of meters will be a different species. They've kind of well adapted to living in almost every zone. They will stick on whatever they can get their hands on. So when I was about to say when I think about barnacles, but I have to admit, I don't think about barnacles.

You know, like, they're so just sedentary and they're kind of almost like ornamental.

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