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!

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: