Blue lobster caught off West Pubnico, N.S.

Réal d’Entremont, a veteran fisherman of 45 years, fishing in the lobster boat Jennifer Jean, has landed his first blue lobster.

Last week a lobster trap came up with a market size blue lobster.

“I have seen pictures of blue lobsters but this is the first time in my life that I have seen a blue lobster come up in the lobster trap. We have caught a red lobster before and that looked funny in the trap. I have also seen half and half and spotted yellow, but this is the first time catching a blue lobster,” d’Entremont said.

“This blue lobster is perfect market size and has no flaws…even the antennas are perfect and blue.”

The lobster was caught in Lobster Bay by the West Pubnico lobster boat, Jennifer Jean, captained by Edouard d’Eon.

Around one in two million lobsters is blue. For the next while the blue lobster, which was caught in Lobster Bay will be calling the fish tank of the seafood department of the Barrington Atlantic Superstore its home.

Seafood manager Paula McKay said, “Anyone who wants to see the blue lobster is welcome to stop by and take a glimpse of it in the fish tank. We also have a yellow lobster taken by a fisherman in Cape Sable Island.”

According to information posted on a Fisheries and Oceans website devoted to lobster, the color of the lobster carapace is made up of a basic pigment (red), which is associated to other pigments like blue and yellow. The mixture of the different pigments gives lobsters their color.

Generally, lobsters are brown (sometimes brown-green or brown-blue), but there are exceptions in nature – blue, orange and yellow lobsters. It happens on the odd occasion that a lobster's carapace has two separate colors. In other cases it is an albino (white) or leopard lobster (dark brown with a large amount of big yellow spots).

All lobsters become red when they are cooked, except albino lobsters. Heat changes the pigments associated to red and destroys their binding. The red pigment is thus released. Albino lobsters remain white when they are cooked because they do not have colour pigment.