Rare blue lobster caught off Alder Point Cape Breton
Colourful crustacean is a one-in-two-million kind of shellfish
One lucky lobster can be thankful for his beautiful blue shell as the fisherman who caught it is sending the colourful crustacean back to the sea.
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Blain Marsh, a third-generation fisherman based out of Alder Point, found the blue lobster in one of the traps he hauled up on Friday, just five days into the season.
“I saw it and I yelled ‘wow, look at that’,” said Marsh, who was working a daughter and a deckhand when they landed the interesting specimen.
It was the first time the veteran fisherman caught a lobster of that colour. Ironically, he caught a very bright orange one the very next day.
When fresh from the ocean, lobsters are usually an unspectacular brownish colour and generally only turn orange once they have been boiled. However, lobsters are known to come in other colours.
Scientists say the rare colours sometimes appear due to natural genetic defects or mutations. In the case of the Alder Point lobster, the colour is likely due to an excessive amount of a certain protein that combines with a red carotenoid molecule to make give it the blue colour.
While some published figures estimate that only one of every two million lobsters are blue, there have been numerous cases of different coloured lobsters caught off the shores of Cape Breton.
Three years ago, 77-year-old Lingan fisherman Stan Eksal caught an extremely rare white lobster, which came to be called ‘Stan’, that ended up in Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada at the base of Toronto’s CN Tower. Researchers estimate that a white lobster is a one-in-100-milliion find.
Not long after Stan was caught, Port Morien lobster fisherman Leif Morrison pulled a blue lobster out of Schooner Cove Pond and named it Sylvia after his late mother. Like Stan, Sylvia was sent to the Ripley’s aquarium.
Veteran Glace Bay fisherman Jack Billard, now in his 63rd year as a lobsterman, has never caught a blue lobster.
“But I have seen lots of lobster that were different colours – I’ve seen yellow ones and some that were half-blue, half-brown and others that had different coloured shells on each side,,” said Billard.
The Cape Breton Post attempted to interview the nameless Alder Point lobster about his imminent return to the ocean. And, while the colourful crustacean may have had the blues after finding himself in a bit of a pinch, he did not crack and subsequent attempts to bring the one-and-a-half pound lobster out of his shell failed.
However, the shellfish will get his 15 minutes of fame before he gets his reprieve from the dinner table.