Shadow
07-10-2012, 11:14 PM
Every lobster reference we have, from playful cartoons to sunburn allegories, leads us to believe that the clawed crustaceans are red.
Not so in the case of Toby, a rare blue lobster caught in May off the Maryland (http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/united-states/maryland-guide/) coast. John Guorley, who owns the restaurant to which Toby was brought, graciously donated him to the National Aquarium (http://www.aqua.org/) in Washington, D.C.
Weird & Wild spoke to lobster experts about blue lobsters and the crustacean’s panorama of color variations.
Though it seems the likes of Toby would turn up, well, once in a blue moon, it’s “unusual, but not that unusual” to find a blue lobster, said Robert C. Bayer, executive director of the Lobster Institute (http://www.lobster.um.maine.edu/index.php?page=1), an organization that works to sustain the U.S. lobster fishery. Though the odds of such an encounter run about one in two million, “we see a few every year,” Bayer said.
True red lobsters—not just ones that turn red when cooked—are a one-in-ten-million find. Yellow lobsters, 1 in 30 million. If you find an albino lobster, hang onto it, because those are one in a hundred million. Bayer can’t recall ever seeing one.
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/07/10/weird-wild-odd-colored-lobsters-decoded/
Not so in the case of Toby, a rare blue lobster caught in May off the Maryland (http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/united-states/maryland-guide/) coast. John Guorley, who owns the restaurant to which Toby was brought, graciously donated him to the National Aquarium (http://www.aqua.org/) in Washington, D.C.
Weird & Wild spoke to lobster experts about blue lobsters and the crustacean’s panorama of color variations.
Though it seems the likes of Toby would turn up, well, once in a blue moon, it’s “unusual, but not that unusual” to find a blue lobster, said Robert C. Bayer, executive director of the Lobster Institute (http://www.lobster.um.maine.edu/index.php?page=1), an organization that works to sustain the U.S. lobster fishery. Though the odds of such an encounter run about one in two million, “we see a few every year,” Bayer said.
True red lobsters—not just ones that turn red when cooked—are a one-in-ten-million find. Yellow lobsters, 1 in 30 million. If you find an albino lobster, hang onto it, because those are one in a hundred million. Bayer can’t recall ever seeing one.
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/07/10/weird-wild-odd-colored-lobsters-decoded/