Some of the lobsters

Three lobsters have been hauled in from the depths of the sea, and are causing quite a stir. One of the specimens is bright blue, another is calico-hued, and the last is a brilliant orange, much like you would expect a Jack-O-Lantern to be.

These lobsters are incredibly rare, and even more rare to be seen together, they are quickly becoming the pride and joy at the Maritime Aquarium in Connecticut, as these lobsters form one of the most unique marine exhibits in the world.

“If you search around you can find other aquariums that have a blue lobster, and one that might have a calico or an orange lobster, but I’ve never seen one advertising having all three,” commented a spokesman for Maritime Aquarium, Dave Sigworth, which is putting it rather mildly.

You see, the odds of actually seeing these three lobsters in the same place are astronomical, if we listen to the Maine-based Lobster Conservancy.

Yellow lobster

Only about one lobster out of a million is born blue, and calico and orange lobsters are much more rare, being that only roughly one in 30 million lobsters are born in those colors.

The aquarium contacted a mathematician and were told, in the expert opinion of someone who knows their numbers, that the odds of encountering all three of these lobsters together in nature was about one in 900 quintillion, that’s 900 followed by 18 zeros!

Hopefully the lobsters like all the attention they get, and truly appreciate how special they really are!

Orange lobster - Picture Birmingham sealife center

So what exactly is so strange about an orange lobster? It’s actually living! Normally, lobsters are a brownish-green color when they are alive, and they turn orange when they have been cooked. That being the case, a strange live reddish-orange lobster has been sighted in the UK.

The lobster, which hails from North America, has been aptly named “Gumbo”. Gumbo is so rare that he was saved from becoming dinner, and was plunked down into a new home at the Birmingham National Sea Life Center.

Before making his way to the Sea Life Center, Gumbo was staying at the Natural History Museum I London. The museum was made aware of the rare find by fishmonger Rex Goldsmith. “I’ve never seen anything like it in 25 years in this business,” Rex commented.

Paul Clark, a crustacean researcher at the museum, was simply flabbergasted by extraordinary color of the carapace and agreed to aid Rex in finding a more suitable home for the lobster. “I was able to set up a saltwater tank here at the Museum to keep him alive until Sea Life agreed to take him and arrange collection.” Paul explained.

The shells of lobsters generally have red, yellow, and blue pigments which give them their brownish-green color when they are still alive.

The lobsters’ diet consists of shrimp, algae and other sea animals which contain cartenoid pigments.

These pigments are what give lobsters their color, and when they are cooked they break down and give them that “red” look.

According to a new research report released by Canadian scientists, American lobsters use jet propulsion to gain extra speed as the walk across the ocean floor. The lobster can produce 27 to 54mN of thrust, which is comparable to that produced by the pectoral fins of proficient swimmers like the Bluegill sunfish (Lepomis macrochirus) and Surfperch (Embiotoca jacksoni).

On the abdomen, the American lobster has tiny paddle-like structures, formally known as pleopods, which it can fan to create a wake that propels it forward. To understand why the lobster fans its “paddles”, graduate student Jeanette Lim and Professor Edwin DeMont of St Francis Xavier University in Antigonish built a mechanical model which replicates the moving parts of the lobster belly.

“No one had actually measured how much force the American lobster’s pleopods could produce,” says Lim. “We just took the abdomen of a lobster, emptied out the tissues, and hooked up eight mini servomotors bought from a robotic toy company in California to the pleopods.”

To image and measure how the plepods affected the surrounding water, the researchers used a technique called particle image velocimetry.

“Once we saw the flow visualisations, we were surprised with how large the wake was,” says Lim, now studying for her PhD at Harvard University in Boston, US. “The pleopods on American lobsters (Homarus americanus) are relatively broad and paddle-shaped compared to pleopods on crayfish, for example. But they are still fairly diminutive and rather flimsy appendages when you consider the size and toughness of the rest of the body. So we were surprised their beating produced a sizable wake with thrust that was on par with forces produced by the fins of some swimming fish.”

The results have been published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

A married couple based in Florida Keys have been sentenced to prison for lobster poaching and will have to pay 1.1 million USD to restore the marine sanctuary in which they carried out their illegal activities.

The husband was sentenced to 30 months in prison since he was he was deemed to be the ringleader while his wife got away with 7 months in prison and 7 months of house arrest. They will also forfeit three vessels and three vehicles. In a parallel civil action, the couple was ordered to pay $1.1 million toward the restoration of coral and sea grasses in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

The couple was indicted last year on a conspiracy charge together with four other lobster-poachers. The six were arrested on the first day of the lobster season after federal agents caught them using hut-like ”casitas” to illegally harvest spiny lobsters from the sanctuary.

In the government’s probe, dubbed Operation Freezer Burn, agents found that the poaching – which had been carried out for two days – had resulted in 1,187 spiny lobsters being caught and stored in freezers at the couple’s home. According to the investigation, the retail market value for such a catch is $21,662 USD.

The couple and three others pleaded guilty, while one defendant was convicted at trial. The couple is expected to raise the money by selling their Cudjoe Key home and another property on Little Torch Key.

Nova Scotia is not the only place with odd looking lobsters; the original Scotland also has some strange colour morphs dwelling in its waters.

If you visit the rock pool at Deep Sea World in North Queensferry, you can for instance encounter one electric blue lobster with white markings and one pitch-black lobster adorned with vivid orange colours that contrast beautifully against the dark areas. Picture here

The blue lobster was caught a quarter of a mile off the coast of Fife on the Scottish east-coast last year by Buckhaven fisherman Keith McKay, 47.

McKay said he had occasionally seen dark blue lobsters since he started laying creels with his father as an 11-year-old boy.

But he added: “I’ve never seen anything like this one in my life. I was surprised at how pale a blue it was. It was really brightly-coloured. I would call it electric blue. I was so surprised I pulled up alongside another fishing boat to show them what I had caught.”

Strangely coloured lobsters are the result of them being genetically different from other lobsters. In the wild, not having the normal olive-grey, mottled camouflage pattern is a disadvantage since predators can spot gaudy lobsters easily against the ocean floor, but for the lobsters living at Deep Sea World, the “genetic defect” actually turned out to be an asset since their flamboyant colours is what saved them from ending up on a dinner plate.

A rare orange-and-yellow lobster has been found off the coast of Prince Edward Island in Canada. Instead of the drab colours normally sported by lobsters, this female specimen boosts a spotted orange-and-yellow pattern. According to specialists, she’s one in about 30 million.

The colourful lobster is currently housed with roughly 100 other lobsters at Arnold’s Lobster and Clam Bar in Eastham, whose owner Nathan “Nick” Nickerson has named her “Fiona” after his girlfriend’s granddaughter. Getting a name is not the only special treatment she’s been awarded; unlike the other inhabitants of the tank her claws are not bound with rubber bands and she can therefore keep her house mates at bay. Lobsters can be cannibalistic, especially in crowded environments, but Nickerson says Fiona is “not very aggressive.”
Arnold’s Lobster and Clam Bar has not put the rare orange-and-yellow lobster on the menu.

“Gosh no!” Nickerson said. “That would be like steaming a Rembrandt.”

Instead, Fiona has gotten used to fine dining at Arnold’s – she’s kept on a diet of Yellowfin tuna of sushi quality while the other lobsters have to make do with cod fish. Nickerson plans on continuing to pamper her for a while before donating her to the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History in Brewster or to the New England Aquarium.

Nickerson received Fiona as a gift from his fried Michael R. Gagne, sales manager at Ipswich Shellfish Company Inc. who says Fiona is a “once-in-a-lifetime lobster”.

1According to Michael F. Tlusty, director of research at the New England Aquarium, Fiona’s distinctive coloration is caused by a rare genetic mutation. He estimated she might be 7 years old based on her weight, but how she managed to survive for so many years in her eye-catching garb is a true mystery.

“If you’re swimming over a muddy bottom, it would be much easier to see a yellow lobster than a normal-colored lobster,” said Tlusty, who has been studying lobsters for 10 years.

“Why was she able to survive with her coloration?” Tlusty asked. “That’s something we’re not quite sure of.”

Shark fin soup has traditionally been a must-have among well-to-do Asians and an essential part of the menu at commemorative dinners, such as wedding banquets and New Years celebrations in countries like China, Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia and Indonesia.

However, as awareness grows about the precarious situation many species of shark are facing in the wild due to over-harvesting; many Asians – especially young ones –are substituting the shark fin soup with alternative dishes at their celebratory events.

Singaporean groom Han Songguang and his scuba diving bride are just one example of this trend; when they tied the knot in December last year they served their guests lobster soup and placed explanatory postcards depicting a dead shark on each seat.

“If we can do our part to save ‘X’ number of sharks … why not?” said Han, a geography teacher.

A symbol of wealth and status in several Asian cultures, shark fin soup consumption has traditionally been a delight available for a comparatively low number of Asian upper-class families only. Hand-in-hand with rising affluence in East Asia and the development of a prosperous middle class segment of society, demand has however soared rapidly in the late 20^th and early 21^st century and about 20 percent of all shark species are now endangered, partly due to them being over-fished to satisfy the Asian markets.

“They live a long time. They have a low reproductive rate. In other words they produce just a few young every year or every few years. So you just can’t take a lot,” says Yvonne Sadovy, a biology professor at the University of Hong Kong.

As more and more young Asians opt for lobsters and other alternatives to shark fins, market demands have dropped noticeably in recent years. After peaking at 897,000 metric tonnes in 2003, the world wide shark consumption has sunk to 758,000 in 2006, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation. British wildlife group TRAFFIC says shark fins now make up an increasingly small percentage of the total consumption.

“Students and people in their 20s wouldn’t go to a shark eatery, and $15 for a dish is no cheap price,” says Joyce Wu, programme officer with TRAFFIC.

Shang-kuan Liang-chi, a National Taiwan University student agrees. “University students never go in there,” he says, referring to a shark fin restaurant near campus.

The decline is not only due to shark fins becoming increasingly out of vogue among environmentally concerned youngsters; the global financial crisis and its effects in Asia has caused many Asian to cut down on restaurant visits or order less expensive dishes.

Another sure sign of the declining popularity of shark fin soup in Asian is the menu for Singapore’s Annual Chefs’ Association dinner – it is now completely void of shark fin dishes.

“It is much harder to stop serving shark’s fin in our restaurants as the consumers still demand it. However, in our personal capacity, we can make a stand,” said Otto Weibel, a food manager at one of Singapore’s top hotels.

Lobsters caught in the Northumberland Strait in eastern Canada are normally black, so it is easy to imagine the surprise fisherman Danny Knockwood of the Elsipogtog First Nation must have felt when he suddenly found himself face to face with a yellow and white specimen. Knockwood made the unusual catch while pulling his traps out of the sea near Richibucto Village, where the Richibucto Rivers empties into the northern Atlantic.

The Canadian fishermen named his new pet Autumn and made a short video of the animal for YouTube. As of October 8, the video had managed to attract several hundred viewers – some of them suggesting that Knockwood should eat his rare find.

Knockwood has however decided to keep Autumn away from the boiling water and has instead managed to find her a new home at the Aquarium and Marine Centre in Shippagan, a museum where marine animals are housed in real seawater. The marine centre is already home to a substantial collection of oddly coloured lobsters, so Autumn will fit right in.

“In captivity, the lobster could live for many years,” says Curator Aurele Godin of the Shippagan Aquarium and Marine Centre. “And I’ve got many other coloured ones — blue ones, yellow ones, orange and blacks. Every year fishermen come up with them. They call me and I go pick them up.”

Instead of showing dark spots on a dark green base colour like normal lobsters, Autumn sports a vivid yellow colour on top while her underside is almost white. According to a specialist from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans who examined the video and photos of Autumn, genetic defects can cause the shell of a lobster to develop strange and unusual colours. The specialist also confirmed that Autumn is a female lobster and estimated her to be roughly 10 years of age.

Until Autumn is transported to the museum, she will be residing in a an underwater cage near Knockwood’s home.

The below story is unrelated to the first one but is still worth a look as it shows how big lobster can grow:

A lobster dinner is often perceived as the ultimate romantic meal, but while we happily utilize their bodies to promote our own chances of passionate encounters we actually know very little about the reproductive rituals that goes on deep down in the ocean. Did you for instance know that these super romantic creatures pee each other in the face before making sweet lobster love?

“Lobsters actually pee each other in the face to communicate” says researcher Malin Skog, a Ph.D. student at the University of Lund in Sweden that will be submitting her dissertation ”Sex and Violence in Lobsters – a Smelly Business” in September. Her research is focused on the importance of fighting and peeing when lobsters mate.

“I discovered that we hardly new anything about our lobster, despite the fact that it is such an important resource for the fishing industry” Malin Skog explains when asked about her peculiar interest in crustacean copulation.

By pairing up lobsters in aquariums, Malin Skog has been able to watch and film how males and females fight each other and how an encounter sometimes results in mating, sometimes in the male getting slapped and forced to retreat. This intricate behaviour seems to be controlled through scent particles excreted in urine. On a lobster, the olfactory organ (the “nose”) is located on the smaller pair of antennae on the head and the urine is also excreted from the head. So in order to communicate through scents, lobsters actually pee each other on the head.

During a lobster fight, the winning member will excrete a scent that means “I am stronger” while the loosing combatant will secrete a scent that says “I give up”. Fighting will not only take place between males and females; lobsters readily fight members of their own sex over food, shelter and general dominance. Regardless of sex, the most violent clashes occur when two individuals of similar size battle each other. Lobster fights can easily result in lost limbs, such as legs and antennae.

When a male lobster encounters a female, the meeting will start with a fight even if the couple is ready to breed. It seems as though the male doesn’t understand that he has found a female lobster until she starts emitting the “I am a girl”-scent. When he senses this scent, he will stop fighting and start walking around her instead, touching her and trying to tip her over on her back. (Lobsters mate in the missionary position, stomach to stomach.) Sometimes the female will readily approve to being flipped over, but in other cases she will object and if she stubbornly refuses to mate no mating will occur.

Sources:
Sex and Violence in Lobsters – a Smelly Business, Malin Skog, a Ph.D. Lund university, Sweden
Interview in sydsvenskan.se (in Swedish)