Fisherman catches 1-in-100 million ‘cotton candy’ lobster
Recommended for Foundational Grades
Have you ever seen a lobster?
What is a lobster?
It is a large shellfish found in the sea. It has eight legs and two large claws. Lobsters are usually bluish-black in colour but turn red when cooked.
A fisherman named Bill Coppersmith in Maine, US, recently caught a very rare-looking lobster. Instead of being the usual bluish-black colour, this one has a bright blue, speckled shell, just like a type of cotton candy. Such coloured lobsters are so rare, you will find only one in one hundred million!
Bill works for a seafood company and its head, Mark Murrell, named the rare blue lobster “Haddie”, after his granddaughter.
Fishermen usually catch a cotton candy lobster once every four or five years. Scientists are not sure how many of them exist in the world.
How do cotton candy lobsters get their rare colour?
Lobsters get their colour from a pigment (colour) called astaxanthin. But Haddie the lobster may have unusually low astaxanthin levels. So, that is why it is coloured so differently.
Haddie now lives at a science centre. They didn’t send it back into the water because its rare colour will make it more attractive to other animals who want to eat it. so, it is much safer at the science centre.
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