BIDDEFORD, Maine (CN) — Put away your melted butter, that bright orange lobster isn't cooked and ready to eat. It may look like it came out of a pot of boiling water, but it's just one of many rare colorful lobsters to show up in a lobster trap off the Maine coast.
Normal lobsters are a mottled greenish-brown, but it is becoming more and more common to hear about crustaceans across New England and Atlantic Canada in all the colors of the rainbow — or perhaps even over it.
Some of these misfits are donated to research organizations, including the Marine Science Center at the University of New England, where they live out their lives and are studied by students and faculty researchers. The center is now home not only to two bright orange lobsters that were caught and donated this month, but also to ones that are blue, yellow, calico and, among the rarest of all, a split-colored lobster — one color on one side, another on the other— the odds of which are said to be about 1 in 50 million.
Why so many colorful lobsters? Have they actually become more numerous, or are we simply seeing more as the harvest has more than tripled in the past 30 years? Or perhaps word is simply getting out more in this era of cellphone cameras, social media and Twitter.
When reports of oddball lobsters make the news, the public is often wowed and has its curiosity piqued, said Charles Tilburg, director of the UNE School of Marine and Environmental Programs. But many lobstermen will tell you that catching a crustacean that’s bright blue, orange or some other color isn’t as extraordinary as some people might think.
“I think it’s more we’re bringing in more lobsters, and social media get the word out more,” Tilburg said while showing the assortment of lobsters at the Marine Science Center. “I don’t think the rarity has changed, but I think people talk a lot more about them.”
Lobster is the top commercial fishery in the Northeast, but there are still lots of unanswered questions about the prehistoric-looking creatures that live on the ocean bottom and fetch top dollar in restaurants around the world. In 2021, commercial landings of American lobster (which is different than the spiny lobsters caught in warmer waters to the south) in the U.S. totaled about 135 million pounds, with Maine accounting for 90% of the catch.
Although diet can also play a role, scientists agree that genetics primarily drive the variations that can result in peculiar colors, said Heather Glon, a senior lobster research biologist with the Maine Department of Marine Resources. Lobsters have different pigments that can cause different colors depending on how they metabolize.
White lobsters occur when there isn't any pigment to give them color, and split-colored lobsters can be half-female and half-male. “Nature is crazy,” she said.
The odds of catching a blue lobster are estimated at 1 in 2 million, while yellow and orange-and-black calico lobsters are pegged at 1 in 30 million, split-colored varieties at 1 in 50 million and white at 1 in 100 million. But those are just guesses, and nobody knows for sure.
Aside from their color, the lobsters are apparently normal in most other ways. They all turn orangey-red when they’re cooked — except for the white ones since they don’t have any pigment — and they all taste the same.
In June, lobstermen reported catching four orange and one calico lobster in just a two-week span in Casco Bay, the rich lobster-fishing grounds around Portland. It’s been said that the odds of catching an orange lobster are 1 in 30 million, but it’s also been written that the odds are 1 in 10 million.
Greg Turner caught one of the orange lobsters and donated it to the University of New England, and then caught an eye-catching black-and-orange calico animal a few days later. Turner, who has fished for close to 50 years since first going out with his father when he was about 5, has caught lobsters that are blue, orange, orange with yellow spots, and what he calls neon cotton-candy blue.
With cellphone cameras and social media, reports of uncommon lobsters being pulled from the deep aren’t as unusual as in the past, he said. “They aren’t quite as rare,” he said, “as you might think they are.”
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