A dreadlocked sea monster has washed up on a beach in Auckland.

Or, as beach-goer Melissa Doubleday put it after stumbling across it on Muriwai Beach on Saturday: “What the hell is that?”

She posted the giant barnacle-covered thing to Facebook asking for help finding out what it was.

After suggestions it could be an "alien pod time capsule" or "sea monster's dreadlocks", it was believed that it was driftwood covered in gooseneck barnacles.

Gooseneck barnacles are filter-feeding crustaceans that live attached to hard surfaces of rock or driftwood.

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