---
title: Turtle Barnacle (Chelonibia testudinaria)
scientific_name: Chelonibia testudinaria
common_name: Turtle Barnacle
taxon: Barnacles
published: 2026-08-11T06:47:06.938Z
updated: 2026-08-11T07:33:53.930Z
tags: Turtle Barnacle, Chelonibia testudinaria, Barnacles, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/barnacles/turtle-barnacle
---

# Turtle Barnacle (*Chelonibia testudinaria*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Barnacles (*Cirripedia*)
- **Size:** up to 5 cm across
- **Depth:** 0-100 m
- **Diet:** Filter feeder
- **Activity:** Cathemeral
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** The shells and skin of sea turtles, and occasionally crabs
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Simultaneous hermaphrodite

## How to recognise it

- flat whitish plates growing directly on a turtle's shell
- up to 5 cm across, often several on one animal
- smooth low profile rather than a raised cone
- found on turtles, never on rock

A barnacle that has given up on rock. It settles on the shell and skin of sea turtles, growing as a flat whitish plate up to 5 cm (2 in) across, and travels wherever its host goes. Look at almost any adult green turtle here and there will be a few, usually toward the rear of the carapace where the water flows cleanest.

Riding a turtle is not a bad living. A barnacle is a filter feeder locked in place, and a stationary one eats only what the current brings; a barnacle on a swimming animal has water pushed through it all day. The cost is that its home ages, molts and eventually dies, so this is a lifetime lease rather than a freehold.

What it does not do is harm the turtle. The plates sit on the shell surface and take nothing from the animal underneath, and a heavy load says more about how slowly a turtle has been moving than about how sick it is. Charles Darwin spent eight years on barnacles before publishing on evolution, and this family - the ones that ride other animals - is a large part of why the group repaid the attention.

## Also known as

- **English:** turtle barnacle
- **French:** balane ronde des tortues marines
- **Italian:** Balano delle tartarughe
- **German:** Schildkröten-Seepocke, Schildkrötenpocke, Schildseepocke
- **Spanish:** Percebe de tortuga
- **Japanese:** カメフジツボ
- **Chinese:** 龜藤壺
- **Russian:** Черепаховый балянус
- **KO:** 꽃게붙이

## Scientific synonyms

- *Chelonibia manati* Gruvel, 1903
- *Chelonibia patula* (Ranzani, 1818)

## Range

Greece, Gulf of Mexico, North Atlantic Ocean

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/barnacles/turtle-barnacle)*
*Updated: August 11, 2026*