Strange and colourful lobsters caught during P.E.I.'s 2021 season

Typically lobsters come out of the water a brownish-red, but this season, fishermen are catching all sorts of colours: blue, black and even some calico.

We spoke with lobster biologist Robert MacMillan with the P.E.I. Department of Fisheries and Communities to find out more about these flamboyant crustaceans. 

Why do we see these lobsters with so many different colours?

It's a combination of genetics and diet. Most lobsters inherit their colour from their parents, like many other species do. As there is in many other species, we have the opportunity for genetic mutations. So, in a normal lobster, they consume red pigment in their food that combines with proteins produced in the lobster body to create yellow, blue and red colours within their shell. And when these colours all mix, we get the traditional brownish green lobster that we typically see. 

But in some animals, we have a mutation that occurs that changes the levels of proteins that are available to bind with the red pigment, and this leads to a number of colour variations, everything from blue to yellow to white, even some calico coloured where they appear spotted. 

What about the half and half ones? What happened there? 

Lobsters are set up a bit differently the way their body works. We sometimes get lobsters that are actually female on one side and male on the other side. So in the colour spectrum, they work the same way where one side they can be normal colour and another side they can lack the protein to create that normal colour and they come out as a different colour. 

Those are probably a little more rare than the blue lobster, but we do see them from time to time. 

What about black lobster?

Some research suggests that the habitat or the environment of the lobsters sometimes brings some different shading into what the colour expression is. You know, that lobster could have some different protein levels that give that really dark brown, that almost gives a black appearance, or it could be a part of its environment where it's living in an area where it's very dark bottom. In order to remain camouflaged, it's remained at a darker colour. 

Can you eat these lobster, no matter what colour they are?

So the interesting thing is, as I mentioned, there's a combination of the red pigment and the protein to produce the colour in the shell. When the lobster's cooked, the high heat breaks down that complex between the pigment and the protein and actually then the red pigment is expressed in their red. 

When these blue lobsters or yellow lobsters are cooked, they return back to their regular colour we're used to seeing: red, cooked lobster.

We hear that these coloured lobster are incredibly rare: one in a million, one in two million etc. Do we have any sense of how rare they are?

If we search back through literature and the media, we get reports of numbers like one in two million for a blue or one in 30 million for a yellow, one of 100 million for a white, but I'm not really sure how accurate those numbers are because nobody is really tracking for colour. 

Do you think that there are more of them or are we just seeing more of them because people have access to cameras wherever they are? 

I think it's a combination of a couple of things. I think because we're at a period of a high abundance of lobster, there's a lot of animals in the water. Anytime you have a larger number of animals in the population, I'm assuming that we would have a larger number with the colour variation. 

But on top of that, we also have the fact that we do have cellphone cameras on board boats and around the harbours to capture these individuals, whereas 25 or 30 years ago they would probably be spoken about around the harbour amongst fishermen. 

You mentioned it's genetic, so for example: if we continue to put blue ones back,  will there be more blue ones out there? 

From what I understand, if you do breed two blue lobster, you can get 100 per cent blue offspring, so that is a possibility. 

I don't think it's a question we'll ever really be able to give an accurate result for. 

What would you like people to do with them when they find them? 

If they're of legal size, they would sell them into the marketplace or they can simply return them to the ocean if they want to. I know some people like to return them when they see a strange individual like this and put them back into the environment for them to live another day. 

I haven't heard any folklore about superstition around catching a coloured lobster, but I know from just the excitement you can sense in people's voices, when they do come across one, they feel like they've captured something unique and something that, you know, they may never see again during their fishing career.

Have a colourful lobster picture to share? Email nicola.macleod@cbc.ca! 

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