A Rare Split-Colored Lobster Was Caught off the Coast of Maine
Last summer, Maine was in the headlines globally after several incredibly rare lobsters were pulled from the ocean. Everything from a calico to a cotton candy colored lobster, people were fascinated to see that lobsters can come in a variety of different shapes, sizes and colors.
But those eye-popping rare lobsters have been in hiding this summer until a lobster boat off the coast of Stonington found something quite unique.
Shared on Reddit by Rainbowlady777, an extremely rare split-colored lobster was pulled in as part of the daily catch on Thursday, August 20.
How rare is rare? Split-colored lobsters are about a one-in-50-million type of find. Maine lobsterman could go their entire career spanning decades and never haul one in.
Amongst all the different pigments lobsters can be outside of their "normal" color, blue is the most common. One in every two million lobsters is estimated to have the blue pigment.
According to the Lobster Institute, the pigment changes are due to a lobster's genetics, but also their diet. So the kind of proteins lobsters are scooping up while traveling through the ocean off of Maine's coast can go a long way to what they look like when they're brought up in a trap.
The lobster boat returned this rare lobster to the ocean after marking its tail to tell other lobsterman that this particular lobster cannot be kept if it were to be caught again.