Just how rare is a two-coloured lobster?

By Tina Comeau

Sou’Wester

NovaNewsNow.com

DFO scientist Doug Pezzack says two-coloured lobsters are not common. But just how rare they are is difficult to know for sure.

“Really, the only thing we have to go on for numbers is how often we hear about them,” he says. “I think in southwest Nova Scotia we hear about them once a year, once every two years, and there’s around 20 or 30 million lobsters landed a year.”

In some circles it’s said the odds of coming across one of these lobsters is one in 50 million or one in 100 million. Pezzack suggests it might actually be more frequent than that – maybe one in 10 million or one in 30 million.

“It’s hard to pin down because very likely there are some caught that are not reported because they’re not as distinct. This one is very bright, but some of them are just subtle differences or they’re not noticed.”

According to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the color of a lobster carapace is made up of a basic red pigment, which is associated to other pigments like blue and yellow. Generally lobsters are brownish black (sometimes brown-green or brown-blue).

But it isn’t unheard of for lobsters to be blue, yellow or even albino. Landing a blue lobster is much more common than a two-colored one, since the odds of catching a blue lobster are one in two million. There have already been several blue lobsters landed in southwestern Nova Scotia since the season opened in late November.

On Jan. 8 southwestern Nova Scotia fisherman Edward Pothier landed a two-coloured lobster.

Asked what causes a lobster to be two colours, in this case normal colouring on one side and bright orange/red on the other, Pezzack says it’s because of something that happens very early in the development stage.

“You’ve got the egg of the lobster and it splits in two and it starts to divide. Something happens in one of those sides where the colour red is there but all of the other colors, for some reason, disappears,” he says. “So everything else that comes from that half of the egg will have that same feature.

“So all of the right side, for example, will be red only, the other side will be normal.”

The lobster landed by Pothier (see story Rare lobster is quite a catch on NovaNewsNow.com) is being given to the Bedford Institute of Oceanography. Pezzack says because lobsters like this are so rare, they can’t really do a lot of study with it. After all, it’s not like there’s a backup around the corner.

“Most likely this one will be on display for various groups coming through and it will be used as sort of a education tool, we can talk about the lobster and then talk about the colouration and why the colours are different,” he says. “When you’ve only got one lobster every two years you can’t do alot with it.”