Seafood Company Donates Rare Yellow Lobster to New England Aquarium

Although lobsters are thought of as “those big red water bugs that taste great with butter,” your average lobster is normally greenish-brown or bluish-green colored. That’s why it’s extra-special when a Salem seafood company donated the yellow lobster they caught to the New England Aquarium. The odds of finding a golden lobster are about 1 in 30 million!

Rare yellow lobster donated to Boston aquarium https://t.co/prB2xZVjo5 pic.twitter.com/dwcoFWB6ra

— WTVR CBS 6 Richmond (@CBS6) September 4, 2017

The rare yellow lobster is currently waiting it out in quarantine before joining the aquarium’s collection of unusually hued lobsters, which include pretty sapphire-blues, oranges, and a bizarrely colored “Halloween” lobster that sports a bright orange right side and a deep black left side. The colors that appear on a lobster’s exoskeleton are the result of a combination of the proteins in the animal’s diet and its genetics.

Experts estimate that there is about a one in two million chance of getting a blue lobster, a one in 50 million shot at catching a split-colored lobster, and the odds of finding a transparent or “crystal” lobster are at a whopping one in 100 million. Strangely enough, Alex Todd of Cumberland, Maine, managed to catch one of these incredibly extraordinary crystal lobsters on August 24, but ended up throwing her back into the ocean.

Rare white 'translucent' lobster caught by Maine fisherman who threw it back into ocean because it was female: https://t.co/rdjGK1oxOi pic.twitter.com/0LFeLpCeVb

— Good Morning America (@GMA) September 4, 2017

While it feels like an incredible shame that he felt like he had to give the ghostly transparent lobster up, he noted that the strange crustacean was an egg-bearing female. According to Maine law, “A person may not take, transport, sell or possess: Any lobster that is bearing eggs,” so the incredibly rare specimen couldn’t legally be taken into captivity. Too bad, as I’m sure she would’ve been an incredible addition to the New England Aquarium’s collection of oddball lobsters.