Denny Ingram reeled in a rather strange lobster in Narragansett Bay’s East Passage last week. It was peculiar indeed, this lobster you see, was gold colored on top, and bright yellow on its sides.
“I thought, holy cow, this is unusual. And no one else around here has ever seen anything like it either,” explained Ingram when asked to comment on the strange event.
They may be scarce, but they are not unheard of. This yellow coloring comes from a gene carried by both parents, and it makes itself apparent in roughly one out of every 30 million lobsters.
Slightly more common than these flashy yellow lobsters, are blue colored lobsters. The Audubon Education Center in Bristol has one of the blue little guys in its tidal pool. It replaced a previous blue occupant which was hauled in in 2003.
“The first blue lobster got too big — about a pound and three-quarters — so we released it back into the Bay,” explained director of the center, Anne Dimonti, “Now, we’re on our second one and it’s doing wonderfully.”
Ms. Dimonti has performed some research on these unusually colored lobsters and has found that estimates were all over the map as to how common they are. She explained that the estimates ranged from one in a million to one in 20 million. In her opinion, one in 4 million is the most commonly accepted figure.
“Being born a blue lobster is not so rare; what’s rare is surviving into adulthood as a blue lobster,” Dimonti explained. “When you’re a bright blue baby lobster walking around on the ocean bottom, somebody is going to pick you off very quickly.”