A gunner's mate holds a fishing ball covered with barnacles that floated across the ocean from Japan. The officers used them for docking practice and they got to keep the ones they picked up.
[Once used by Japanese fishermen to keep their fishing nets, as well as longlines or droplines, afloat. Large groups of fishnets strung together, sometimes 50 miles (80 km) long, were set adrift in the ocean and supported near the surface by hollow glass balls or cylinders containing air to give them buoyancy. These glass floats are no longer used by fishermen.]
