Number Of Odd-Colored Lobsters Rising In North Atlantic

What color is a lobster supposed to be? Finding an orange lobster used to be considered a 1-in-10 million oddity, but odd-colored lobsters are becoming more common along the north-east coast.

According to the Associated Press, a recent 100-pound shipment of lobsters to Bill Sarro’s seafood shop contained six orange lobsters.

Sarro said:

“My butcher was unloading them and said, ‘Oh, my gosh, boss, they sent us cooked dead lobsters.’ He then picked one up and it crawled up his arm.”

Michael Tlusty, research director at the New England Aquarium in Boston, said that it isn’t clear why some lobsters are oddly colored. What is clear, however, is that stories about blue, orange, yellow, white and even multi-colored lobsters are becoming more common.

But that might not mean that lobsters are changing. One theory about the abundance of odd-colored lobsters has to do with the popularity of camera phones and social media.

Another theory is that unique lobsters are being caught more often because the overall numbers of lobsters caught has grown rapidly over the last 20 years.

Tlusty said:

“Are we seeing more because the Twitter sphere is active and people get excited about colorful lobsters?… Is it because we’re actually seeing an upswing in them? Is it just that we’re catching more lobsters so we have the opportunity to see more? “Right now you can make a lot of explanations.”

Have you ever seen an odd-colored lobster?