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| Photo Courtesy of LegalAdmin/Flickr Creative Commons |
When a New Hampshire fisherman noticed a metallic blue object in his lobster trap this Wednesday, he just thought he’d caught an old Miller Lite beer can. Little did 52-year-old Bill Marconi know, he had just pulled in a once in a lifetime catch – an extremely rare, cobalt blue adult lobster.
“I was wicked surprised,” he told a local newspaper.
The second generation lobsterman caught the unusual crustacean near the Isles of Shoals, approximately 6 miles from the coastline, while hauling in 400 traps with his son on their boat, “Beatrice A.” The lobster weighs 1 ½ lbs.
Blue lobsters are said to be colored differently because of their ability to process astaxanthin, an antioxidant in algae with red pigments. The astaxanthin bonds with proteins in the lobster’s shell and skin and gives it a blue hue. Researchers estimate there is only a one in five million chance of catching a blue one like Marconi’s. But there are several other oddly colored lobsters - including white, yellow, and bright orange that are the result of different processing techniques for astaxanthin - that take up residence in Northern Atlantic waters.
While some are more rare than others (Mike Tlusty, the research director for the New England Aquarium says there is a one in 30 million chance of catching a traffic-cone-orange lobster), the Aquarium spokesman Tony LaCasse told local news there has been an increase in sightings of strangely-colored lobsters over the past few years. And it isn’t pollution or chemicals causing a higher number of these strange critters; LaCasse credits it to thriving lobster populations. With tight fishing regulations that have allowed lobsters the chance to come to maturation and breed, there is bound to be more lobsters turning blue. And if two blue lobsters mate they produce a whole litter of blue babies.
Marconi is currently keeping his blue lobster alive until he can figure out what to do with it, one of the possibilities being donating it to the Seacoast Science Center in Rye, NH.