Rare Lobster Madness!

The New England Aquarium is no stranger to the disturbing and colorful world of rare lobsters. There's the orange and blue lobsters in the Stellwagen Bank exhibit and the monstrous 17-pound lobster terrorizing the harbor seals in the outdoor exhibit. Oh, and don't forget Goliath, the 20 pound lobster.

But even here, at the dizzying epicenter of lobster abnormalities, we can be impressed. In this case, it's mostly by the odds. In the last two weeks, Massachusetts lobstermen (the most sustainable lobstermen in the country I might add) have carefully delivered a treasure trove of lobster freaks. One distributor alone got a blue lobster and a white lobster just weeks apart. Then another distributor picked up a pretty big (6 ilb.) blue albino lobster.

The fact of the matter is that these pigment abnormalities, as rare as they are, aren't the strangest. For the real bizarre color combos check out the Mystic Aquarium's half brown half white lobster. Thanks to that Deep Sea News classic post we know that that coloring is possible because the two sides of a lobster grow separately, and pigment can be altered for one half during an early stage of cell division.

However, if the finds are going to come in at this rate, we can expect a 70 pound lavender lobster by Thanksgiving.