Yet Another Two-Toned Lobster

Status: Strange, but real
image Big Gary forwarded me this story about a rare two-toned lobster found last week by a lobsterman, Alan Robinson, off the coast of Maine. Robinson donated it to the Mount Desert Oceanarium whose staff members say that "the odds or finding a half-and-half lobster are 1 in 50 million to 100 million. By comparison, the odds of finding a blue lobster are about 1 in a million."


image Something about this story struck me as very familiar. And then I remembered what it was. Another story about the discovery of a two-toned lobster was posted last month in the forum. This earlier lobster was found off the coast of Newfoundland and is currently on display at the marine interpretation centre in Terra Nova National Park.

So what are the odds of two half-toned lobsters being found within a month and a half of each other? It's like these things are popping up all over.

Animals

Posted on Sun Jul 16, 2006



Comments

Given how many people there are, and how many of them fish, I'd say pretty good odds.
Posted by Citizen Premier  on  Sun Jul 16, 2006  at  11:31 PM
You know, the creepy thing about this is that if it's possible for a lobster to develop without the pigments that hide that bright orange on one half of its body, it might be possible to find a completely bright orange lobster. Would be like watching a cooked lobster walk around.

The opportunity for pranks would be immense...though I imagine the reason these parti-colored lobsters are so rare is they'd probably stand out like a neon light and get picked off pretty easily.
Posted by Ponygirl  on  Sun Jul 16, 2006  at  11:35 PM
The Mount Desert Oceanarium has great displays; we were there the day before the two-toned was found. They also had one which appeared to have red-orange polka dots, roughly 1/4" in diameter, all over its shell.
Posted by cvirtue  on  Mon Jul 17, 2006  at  04:01 AM
Its a sign. The End is Neigh. It are the Lobsters of the Apocalypse... Those damned Opus Dei Jesuits removed it from the Bible, but I tell ya it was there originally...and those girls at Fatima, they saw a giant Orange lobster in the skies...
Posted by LaMa  on  Mon Jul 17, 2006  at  05:22 AM
Oh, and the Knights Templar (and the Freemasons and the Illuminati), they worshipped an half orange lobster too...
Posted by LaMa  on  Mon Jul 17, 2006  at  05:24 AM
Pony girl, there are solid orange lobsters found now and then. Also solid blue lobsters. They are much less rare than the two-toned lobsters.

I'ts also possible in aquaculture to change the color of crustaceans by manipulating their feed. A friend of mine did an internship on a crayfish farm, and they were able to come up with turquoise, yellow, white, black, green, etc. crawdaddys. This isn't done on a large scale because it's a lot of trouble and there isn't any particular market for off-colored shellfish.

A niche market has developed in the pet trade, though, for solid blue crayfish and prawns (both are often sold as "freshwater lobsters." They start with species that have a lot of blue in their shells and make them more blue by giving them foods containing a lot of blue pigments and by keeping them on a blue substrate (like many aquatic animals, they can modify their color somewhat to blend in with their surroundings.
Posted by Big Gary, MoHDCicoF  on  Mon Jul 17, 2006  at  07:21 AM
The real question is, do both sides taste the same?
Posted by Mickyfinn  on  Mon Jul 17, 2006  at  07:37 AM
Maybe it was only half cooked. That would explain a lot.
Posted by Lounge Lizard  on  Mon Jul 17, 2006  at  12:40 PM
Yesterday it was on the news that, off the coast of Maine, hours apart and a hundred or so miles two YELLOW lobsters were caught!
Posted by atomman  on  Wed Aug 02, 2006  at  11:43 AM
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