Researchers say that the colors of lobsters can vary wildly depending on certain genetic traits and defects.
Did you ever think you would see a blue lobster? Well, the day has come.
When cooked, lobsters have a brilliant red color. Before cooking, most American lobsters have a brownish, greenish hue. But according to a recent USA Today article, the colors of these crustaceans can vary wildly depending on certain genetic traits and defects. Lobsters of other colors are rare, of course, but they can be found in nature from time to time.
Remarkably, not just one, but four of these rare rainbow lobsters were recently caught within just a few weeks of each other. The first one, the brilliant blue fellow mentioned above, was caught on August 23, just off Pine Point in Scarborough, Maine. Meghan and Jay LaPlante, a daughter-father pair, caught the blue bugger and named him Skylar. The LaPlantes also opted not to cook or sell Skylar, but donated him to the Maine State Aquarium so that everyone can admire his rare color.
A week after that catch, and just a bit north up the Maine coast, a lobsterman named Joe Bates pulled another unique lobster from the water, this one with a pearly white color. The USA Today article says that researchers would put the odds of finding one of these albino lobsters at 1-in-100-million, but those odds were beaten just five days later when another lobsterman, Bret Philbrick, found a white lobster of his own.
The miraculous nature of the occurrence was rounded out earlier this week, when Joe Bates caught his second rare lobster: a yellow specimen. Yellow lobsters are a bit more common than albino ones, but the odds of finding one is still 1-in-30-million. The three lobsters caught by Bates and Philbrick will soon follow Skylar to the Maine State Aquarium, based in Boothbay Harbor.
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