Barnacle-covered basketball discovered lost at sea

English skipper Annie Gilbert and her husband Ian came across something very unusual recently while out fishing.

About 10 miles south of The Needles on the Isle of Wight, the couple noticed a Spalding NBA basketball covered in goose barnacles bobbing in the water.

"We saw the barnacles as the ball was floating - some were out of the water, and when we landed the ball we saw that a lot had in fact hidden under the water," Gilbert, 54, told Max McLean of Independent.ie.

The couple decided to put the well-traveled basketball back in the water so it could continue on its journey, where Gilbert thinks "the colony of barnacles will possibly grow on the underside."