Being blue keeps lobster in the pink

There’s no reason for this lobster to feel blue. He’s likely going to escape the pot.

A blue lobster caught last week by Jeffrey Leeman in the waters of St. Mary’s Bay appears to have beaten the odds. The blue colour is a one in two million chance, and the fisherman that caught him wants to see Boy Blue given a secure home.

“We didn’t want to sell it and we didn’t want to let anyone eat it,” said Leeman’s wife Sherry, who was fishing with her husband when the colourful crustacean was hauled from the bay’s cold waters.

At one and a half pounds, the lobster was already a ‘keeper’, but now he’s being kept—and fed—while the Leemans look for a new home. The Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic in Lunenburg was suggested as one possibility since it has an aquarium and lobsters of its own.

It’s the first blue lobster Leeman has caught in 25 years of fishing although he did trap one last year that was partly yellow.

Blue or yellow, they lobsters do turn red in boiling water, but the future looks cool for this crustacean.



QUICKGLANCE

• About one in two million lobsters is blue. A genetic defect causes a blue lobster to produce an excessive amount of protein. The protein, and a red caratenoid molecule known as astaxanthin, combine to form a blue complex known as crustacyanin, giving the lobster its blue color.