At first the fishermen feared they had found a floating human head off the UK coast.
But it soon emerged that the discovery wasn’t quite as macabre as they had thought, when it turned out to be a basketball covered in 100 barnacles.
Annie Gilbert, 54, of Poole, Dorset, feared to go near the object in the water ten miles off the south coast of the Isle of Wight, initially fearing it to be human remains.
Fisherman Ian Gilbert poses with the basketball which was covered in 100 barnacles
The fishermen had at first feared they had found a floating human head off the UK coast
It soon emerged that the discovery off the Isle of Wight wasn’t as macabre as they had feared
After drawing closer, Mrs Gilbert and her husband Ian, who were travelling on their fishing boat the ‘Happy Hooker II’ realised it was a basketball and scooped it up.
But beneath the ball was an impressive crowd of crustaceans, up to 100 goose barnacles, forming a beard-like appearance.
Not wanting to disrupt the marine crustaceans, the couple took pictures and quickly released them back to their natural environment.
Goose barnacles have both male and female sexual organs. Their eggs hatch into free-swimming larvae that would have attached themselves to the ball.
Ian and Angie Gilbert, from Poole, had been ten miles off the south coast of the Isle of Wight
Mr Gilbert is pictured with one of their catches before they discovered the basketball
Mrs Gilbert, seen with another catch, photographed the ball before putting it back in the sea
Once latching to an object, typically driftwood, barnacles never move unless forcibly evicted and feed by filtering food particles from the water.
Mrs Gilbert, a fisherman, said: ‘We discovered the basketball as we were on our way out to a fishing mark we saw something bobbing about in the water.
‘When we first saw it just for a horrible moment we thought it was a human head but as we got alongside we saw it was a ball.
‘As we came along side I got the landing net and scooped it up and that’s when we saw all the goose barnacles on it.
Mrs Gilbert, pictured with some of her plaice catches, was amazed by the discovery
Mr and Mrs Gilbert had been travelling on their fishing boat the ‘Happy Hooker II’ at the time
The ball evokes memories of Wilson the volleyball in the 2000 film Cast Away, with Tom Hanks
‘It was something that we had never seen before, so we had to get some photos of it.
‘The top of the basketball was clean but there must have been hundreds of the goose barnacles stuck to the underside of the ball where it had been sat in the water.
‘We quickly photographed it then put it back into the sea as we didn’t want to damage any of the sea life that was attached to it.’
The ball evokes memories of Wilson the volleyball in the 2000 film Cast Away, which becomes a personified friend to stranded Chuck Noland, played by Tom Hanks.