Rare crabs hitch a lift on barrel across the ocean

A pair of Columbus crabs which hitched a lift on a barrel drifting in the sea have been washed ashore in the northern Dingle Peninsula.

Seldom seen in Irish waters, the small crabs attached themselves to goose barnacles clinging to the barrel and were found on Kilcummin Strand in the Castlegregory area of Co Kerry.

Normally resident in the western Atlantic, mainly in the Sargasso Sea and the Bermudas, they are believed by marine expert Kevin Flannery to have floated thousands of miles across the ocean.