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At a dimly lit hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Lisbon, I’m elated to find gooseneck barnacles on the menu. Enjoyed in this region of the world, percebes are generally under two inches long, with a fleshy body and pieces of shell that lead to a point on one end. Boiled and tossed in butter, they’re sweet, with a satisfying chew, similar to a razor clam.

Tender and delicious, gooseneck barnacles are expensive. Rui Franco, a professional shellfish gatherer based in Ericeira, a fishing town and premier surfing destination on the western coast of Portugal, explains that prices can vary greatly depending on quality, size and season. Generally, he sells barnacles for about 10 euros per kilogram, about $5 a pound. “However, in a good seafood restaurant in Madrid or Barcelona, it can go for up to 500 euros per kilogram,” he says. At this particular establishment, I ended up paying around 55 euros ($60) for an order big enough to share.

It’s really no wonder when you hear how the delicacy is harvested.

gooseneck barnacles in butter
Boiled and tossed in butter, they’re sweet, with a satisfying chew. CM Mafra

“Barnacles live and grow in the intertidal zone, between high tide and low tide, in the area where there is the most swell,” Franco explains. “The higher the tide, the more oxygen there is, and they tend to settle.” Shellfish gatherers, in a risky endeavor, have to extract them from the rocks. “They breed in the areas with the biggest waves, in the part of the sea that has that white, crashing foam,” he adds.

Gooseneck barnacles earned their English name for two reasons. First, they have a long, muscular stalk that arguably resembles a goose’s long neck. And secondly, hundreds of years ago, people, having not seen how geese nest, oddly surmised that the birds grew from these barnacles. “A legend dating back to the 12th century has it that a pair of unusual geese showed up in Scotland that no one had seen before. Not having seen this type of goose emerge from any known eggs, locals deduced they must have hatched from the gooseneck-like barnacles that washed up on the shore,” writes Carrie Stevenson, a coastal sustainability agent for the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, in a blog post.

Franco has been a shellfish gatherer since the 1990s. He holds one of the first gathering license numbers. “My ANI number, the national number for shellfish gatherers, is 12,” says Franco. “I’m not going to say that I’m one of the oldest, but in terms of national licensing, when the legislation changed in the early 2000s, if I’m not mistaken, I was one of the first to process the paperwork.”

The 49-year-old admits that it’s not an easy job, so having the drive and determination is important. For Franco, it started with a passion for the sea. He fished from a young age in Ericeira; as a young adult, he was diving to catch fish, octopus and razor clams, but soon seafood restaurants were asking for barnacles. “I ended up falling in love with the activity, and, from then on, I never let go, dedicating myself full-time to catching barnacles,” he says.

gooseneck barnacles found on a piece of driftwood
Gooseneck barnacles attach themselves to rocks and driftwood. Brian Guzzetti/Design Pics/Getty Images

Harvesting barnacles involves quite a few steps, some treacherous at times, especially without proper training.

Gatherers free dive, without the use of compressed air, hoses or bottles, and extract the barnacles from rocks using an arrilhada, a metal tool with a cutting front face and a blade that doesn’t exceed about eight inches in length and one inch in width at the cutting edge. “You need to have some knowledge of the sea to master the technique of moving the eyelet [a small round hole in the crustacean] to try to catch the barnacles without damaging them,” Franco says. In addition to quality and size, a barnacle’s value changes based on the way it is caught. “If it is all cut up, it will not last long and therefore will not be as valuable,” he explains. Divers put themselves at a certain angle to attack the rock, to avoid cutting the underside of the barnacle. “The barnacle does not die, it stays alive for at least a week, so it’s always more valuable if it’s caught at this angle of attack on the stone,” Franco says.

Barnacle gatherers experience maybe 20 or 30 calm summer days, but for the rest of the year, especially in winter, they have to be careful, as falling and being shoved against the rocks is an accepted risk of the job. “You walk on a knife-edge, you walk on the redemption of the break of the sea,” Franco says.

Experienced fishermen take specific conditions and elements, like the weather and the swell, into consideration when deciding how to approach their day. “Nowadays, there is a lot of information online that makes our lives easier and helps us to be prepared,” says Franco. Plus, over time, catchers gain “knowledge of the best rocks” and “experience of where the best, the biggest are.”

As far as if it’s worth it, Franco wouldn’t have it any other way. “Of course, money is important, but I believe that the majority of barnacle gatherers do it out of passion,” he says. “I know several people who already have their lives organized and do not need to work with barnacles, but they never stop doing it, even when they’re 70 and over, because it’s an addiction, an adrenaline rush and a passion that’s hard to give up.”

gooseneck barnacles with other seafood
The delicacy is served mainly in casual establishments throughout Portugal, Spain and the Pacific Northwest of the United States, where they are found along the coast. CM Mafra

Younger people are still learning the skill from elder family members and colleagues, so in that sense the industry continues on. Franco is more worried about the quantity of resources. Fishermen are seeing damaged stocks, because the legislation in place isn’t enough to maintain a healthy population of barnacles.

“Each shellfish gatherer can catch a maximum weight of 20 kilograms a day. We do not always manage to do this, but when the conditions are right, we can achieve this amount,” Franco says.

Diners certainly have these fishermen to thank for the delicacy served mainly in casual establishments throughout Portugal, Spain and the Pacific Northwest of the United States, where they are found along the coast. Chef Pedro de Castro at the restaurant Golfinho Azul in Ericeira features them on his menu seasonally, between March and June and September and December. He generally serves the barnacles boiled or steamed, and he explains that the texture can vary a bit depending on where the barnacles were found—deep or closer to the surface.

opening a gooseneck barnacle
To eat a gooseneck barnacle, you have to peel back its outer leathery skin. Cavan Images/Patrick Kunkel

“You clean them, put them in boiling water and count four minutes before taking them out and putting them in ice.” Try it, Castro says, and “you will for sure taste the sea.”

Gooseneck barnacles have a slight sweetness and a briny saltiness—and, let’s be honest, look like dinosaur toes.

“The people who eat them, look for them,” says Castro. “Sometimes they even choose restaurants because of that.”

We tucked into our table at Cervejaria Ramiro, a family-run eatery known for dishing up top-notch seafood, and prepared ourselves, armed with bottles of albariño wine and crusty white bread. The table was filled with Cinco Jotas Iberian ham, juicy garlic shrimp, amêijoa à bulhão pato and the star of the show, barnacles.

Socializing while peeling back the barnacle’s outer leathery skin, shell in hand, devouring the sweet, buttery meat is truly an experience I’ll never forget. Plus, I have to admit, the barnacles taste that much better knowing the risk that goes into bringing them to the table.

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Jessica Kelly is a travel journalist and photographer based in New York. She has written for Huffington Post, Condé Nast Traveler, Bon Appétit, Hemisphere and other publications.