Canadian fisherman Robinson Russell has spent a lot of time at sea. But he’s never seen anything as spectacular as he did during a winter fishing trip off the coast of Grand Manan Island.
The 38-year-old lobsterman was shocked to see that he pulled up a one in 100 million catch.
Russell caught a rare cotton candy-colored lobsters near the border of Maine. The lobster is a beautiful blue color with touches of purple around his claws that can look white at times.
“I live on a tiny island off the coast of New Brunswick, Canada, called Grand Manan,” Russell told The Dodo. “I have been fishing for over 20 years and it’s the first one I’ve ever seen of that color.”
He named the lobster Lucky.
Most people think that lobsters are red, but that’s only when they are cooked and they take on a russet hue because of a red pigment in the lobster shells called astaxanthin, according to Science Alert. They are typically a brownish-green color in nature.
But lobsters can actually vary in color. You’ll sometimes find a lobster with an unusual color, like yellow, blue, orange, or half-red-half black lobsters, which is due to a genetic mutation.
The rarest type of lobster is the albino lobster.
They are believed to occur only once in 100 million lobsters. Lucky, according to Time, appears to be an albino lobster.
Justin Rizzari, a research fellow at the University of Tasmania’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) said that the rarity of more vividly-hued colored lobsters can also be attributed to the food chain.
This is because they struggle to camouflage and hide from predators.
“Evolutionarily, it is not conducive for survival. If you can imagine a bright white-colored lobster trying to hide from a predator — it would be very hard as they would stick out like sore thumb,” Rizzari said. “Over time this would result in them becoming rarer and rarer.”
Russell said he didn’t know what to do with the lobster at first.
He did know that he didn’t want the lobster to end up on someone’s dinner plate.
“We named it Lucky on the way in, and I posted a few photos of it on Instagram,” Russell said. “I really didn’t want to sell it, so I ended up donating it to the Huntsman [Marine] Aquarium in St. Andrews where it will now live out the rest of its days.”
Though these lobsters are rare looking they still taste the same.
“It might look a little odd, and might put some people off,” Jeff said. “[But] it’s going to live out a happy life in that aquarium. What a lucky lobster!”
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