Posted on 11/12/2021 11:31:45 AM PST by Red Badger
(Get Maine Lobster)
A Maine lobsterman recently made a 1-in-a-100-million catch when he pulled up a rare lobster with a bright blue, speckled shell, the color of fairground cotton candy.
The lobsterman, Bill Coppersmith, caught the so-called cotton candy lobster on Nov. 5 in Casco Bay, an inlet of the Gulf of Maine. "Bill and his crew were extremely excited," said Katie Oross, a spokesperson for the seafood company Get Maine Lobster, for which Coopersmith is a contract fisherman.
Coppersmith named the baby-blue crustacean Haddie, after his granddaughter, and he quickly alerted Get Maine Lobster of the catch, Oross told Live Science in an email.
Cotton candy lobsters are certainly a rarity, although it's unclear exactly how many exist in the wild, according to National Geographic. That said, the whimsically colored crustaceans turn up about once every four to five years, Michael Tlusty, associate professor of sustainability and food solutions at the University of Massachusetts Boston, told National Geographic.
"It is so rare, there's only 1 in 100 million caught," Mark Murrell, CEO of Get Maine Lobster, said in a recent video about Haddie. Coopersmith, who has been a lobsterman for 40 years, has caught two other rare lobsters in the past, one white and one orange, Oross said.
He named those colorful crustaceans after his grandchildren as well.
Lobsters get their color from a pigment and antioxidant called astaxanthin, and the shape of this compound changes when other proteins bind to it, according to National Geographic.
When you cook lobster, the chemical bonds holding proteins to the pigment break, freeing astaxanthin throughout the lobster's shell and skin, and making the animal appear bright red, Nature reported.
But in live lobsters, some proteins grab hold of astaxanthin and contort the molecule so much that the twisted version absorbs and reflects different wavelengths of light; the reflected wavelengths give the pigment its color.
Binding to certain proteins makes astaxanthin appear blue, other proteins make it look yellow and any free-floating astaxanthin in the lobster looks red, National Geographic reported.
The rare lobster after it was just caught in Maine. (Get Maine Lobster)
The mix of these many colors usually gives lobsters their mottled, burnt orange, and brown appearance, but every once in a while, a cerulean lobster-like Haddie crops up.
This drastic shift in coloration may stem from the lobster having unusually low astaxanthin levels, due to a diet that's low in the compound; this could happen if the lobster mostly fed on bait fish, rather than the typical lobster diet of astaxanthin-rich crab and shrimp.
If that's the case, what little astaxanthin the lobster consumed would have to primarily bind with proteins that cause the pigment to look blue, to give the animal that cotton candy color.
Or alternatively, the lobster's color could be the result of a genetic quirk that alters the proteins that bind to the pigment, thus changing its apparent color, according to National Geographic.
Whatever the cause of her opal-like coloration, Haddie the lobster has found a new home at the Seacoast Science Center in Rye, New Hampshire. "This is a beautiful lobster, and we want to preserve it," Murrell said in the company's recent video.
Why not release Haddie back into the Gulf of Maine? "According to the Maine Lobstermen's Community Alliance, lobsters with rare coloring may be at a disadvantage and more visible to predators, since their normal coloring helps them blend in with the environment," Oross told Live Science.
"Therefore, Get Maine Lobster donated her to the Seacoast Science Center, where she can hang out with other lobsters and be as safe as can be."
Most places have blue and pink, for boys and girls.........that is sexist?............
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Used to be only one color - so yes, now is sexist.
I had to read the whole article to find out that nobody ate the thing.
Last time I will ever read the entire article on FR.
5.56mm
I bet it wasn’t the first time....................
Saved from the pot because of their unique color? That has to be racist! Where is the NAACF. Seriously, I bet there is an enterprising young lobster with a bunch of bright colored waterproof permanent paints and a sign promising a life of leisure and safety from being eaten for the low low price of 3 fish.
Ooops, I guess that would be the NAACC (for crustacean) instead of F for fish.
Cotton candy has mostly been pink (in my experience) so I expected to see a pink lobster, not a blue one!
Lobster is a lot of work.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Crab (IMO) is worse.
I went to a crab picking a couple of years ago ... I managed to get one picked & ended up eating other elements of ‘the boil’ (sausage, corn, potatoes) & drinking a lot. I would have starved if I’d had to rely on crabs for sustenance. The gal down the table & across from me had a pile of shells about a foot high - her hubby said she could pick more crabs faster than anyone he’d ever seen!
Had some a couple times while growing up. Never really cared much for the taste, and I have since discovered I'm allergic to shellfish, so it's now on my list of things to avoid.
King crab is tops on my shell cracking order. Too bad they are so darned expensive.
I suspect that they picked up the lobster molts. They’re a shed exoskeleton.
I actually like crab legs better than lobster, but they are even more work getting that meat out .
But way too much work unless soft-shelled.
8^)
Damn senior moment.
5.56mm
When I lived in Hawaii I ate them at least once a week, frequently twice. I was diving constantly and they were everywhere (at night), so even the neighbors had as many as they wanted.
We used to go to a restaurant in FL that put brown butcher’s paper on the tables and gave you a wooden mallet.
I have them all the time....................mostly in public...........
I like lobster, but even before “now”, it was just too expensive unless I wanted too buy those little “tails” that were about as long as my thumb. Crab legs the same- more than I could afford. We’ll buy a couple pounds of frozen, uncooked shrimp. I’ll shell and devein ‘em, throw ‘em in a pot of boiling water with some Old Bay, lemons cut in half, two heads of garlic cut in half. Boil ‘em ‘til they turn pink, drain ‘em and dump ‘em into ice water to stop cooking. My wife likes to make Shrimp Deshong, I like ‘em cold with a soft drink and PLENTY of cocktail sauce! Now I’m wishing we had some in the freezer☹️!
Not where I grew up. Cotton candy was everywhere - at every fair, every roller coaster park, the boardwalk, the ball park, the race track, the zoo, all over the place. And it was always pink.
Maybe it was different in different regions.
Lobster Haddie is thrilled to be in New Hampshire, where she doesn’t have to pay Maine’s state income tax or sales tax!
Mrs AV
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