In the case of catching crustaceans, fishing for lobsters can be a treasure hunt. There are some bizarre and – sometimes very rare – exceptions to this type of popular seafood gray-green wild body type.
One such lobster recently avoided being part of the menu at a Red Lobster restaurant, but luckily for the Freckles staff they realized they had stumbled upon something special. Our speculative star freckles are known as calico lobsters which are characterized by a body covered in blue and bright orange spots.
He was discovered while rolling from Maine to the Red Lobster restaurant in Manassas, Virginia. Recognizing that they had something unusual in their hands, the restaurant contacted the Virginia Living Museum where Freckles would be on display as one of the museum’s many live exhibits. Calico is a term used to describe animals of color. For freckles and other calico lobsters, it is usually a mixture of bright/orange and dark blue-green.
Calico cats are any domesticated breed of cat that is made up of its coat-triangular splodges. In the case of the lobster royalty, Calicos sits next to the yellow lobster among 30 million people. A yellow lobster called banana was picked up by Maine crews in February. The odds of catching blue goiter are one in 2 million, and for both blue and yellow lobsters, the result of genetic mutations of unusual colored proteins that bind to shell pigments. “Crystal lobsters” have a pigment condition known as leucism that causes the animal to appear paler than others.
Interestingly, these are the only young lobster species that do not turn red during cooking, the most common of which are shell proteins that are exposed to heat and reveal the pigment molecule astaxanthin. In the case of crystal lobsters, these turbo-rare crustaceans are one in 100 million – making life one of the brightest of Pokémon cards. Another fitting entry for Top Trump in Nova Scotia, Canada is that it spread an extra nail on his nails.
Repetition of body parts is not uncommon in arthropods, which are characterized by repetition of fractured parts of their body blueprints. Each section contains a set of regulatory genes that determine what additions will increase in that segment, so when a surprise claw pops up in the wrong place it results in a signal error from the regulator genes. And, if you are desperate for humanity, at this very moment, a lobster was found by a crew aboard a fishing boat in New Brunswick, Canada, where the Pepsi logo could be pressed into its nails.
This remarkable catch was relayed by Karissa Lindstrand, who instantly recognized the branding as a self-recognized daily consumer of 12 cans of Pepsi, but that’s another day’s story.
