An extremely rare blue lobster was caught by a fisherman in Cornwall, UK, before being released back into the sea.
25-year-old Tom Lambourn from Newlyn had been out fishing when he captured the incredible creature.
He photographed the rare ‘one-in-two-million’ lobster before releasing it back into the sea as it was ‘too small to bring into land’.
Tom said:
“With every pot you never know what is going to be inside, and I’ve certainly never seen one that colour before.
This is only my second fishing season so I think I’ve been very lucky.
I measured it and it was undersized so there was never any thought of keeping it.
If it had been bigger, I would have taken it to the National Hatchery.
I sent them some photos of the lobster and they told me it is one-in-two-million so that is quite special.”
A spokesman for the National Lobster Hatchery in Padstow, Cornwall, said:
“It is a pretty rare colour morph to come across, about one in two million chance, so we were amazed when Tom sent us the photo of it.
The lobster was too small to bring in to land so was popped back in the sea so it can keep growing.
Who knew that a crustacean could be so vibrant?”
Ben Marshall, National Lobster Hatchery supervisor, said:
“It is very, very rare and very interesting to see a blue lobster.”
A few years ago, another fisherman caught a blue lobster off the Cape Cod coast in the US.
Wayne Nickerson, a commercial lobsterman who has worked for about 4 decades in Plymouth, Massachusetts, was out on his boat when he saw the blue lobster caught in a wire trap, ABC News reported.
He then phoned his wife, Jan, and asked her to meet him when he docked the boat to show her the marvelous 2-pound creature.
“He let out a loud exclamation of excitement,” Jan told said.
“He was very clear about how excited he was.”
Jan named the lobster “Bleu”.
Interestingly, this is the second blue lobster Wayne has caught. The first one he encountered was back in 1990.
According to the Lobster Institute at the University of Maine, only one in two million lobsters is blue, due to a genetic defect.
But these aren’t the only colors lobsters come in. They can also be yellow, orange, and brown split and tortoise shell. There’s even an “albino” lobster!
The chances of finding a brown and orange lobster are 1 in 50 million, the institute says.
Bleu was placed in a tank with other lobsters at the Nickersons family’s house, and they soon got in touch with a local aquarium where they hoped to present him.
If you wish to learn more about the rarest lobsters, check out the video below.
What are your thoughts on this incredible finding? Let us know by joining the conversation in the comments and please share this article if you’ve enjoyed it.
