ASSOCIATED PRESS • September 7, 2024
Orange, blue, calico, two-toned and … cotton-candy colored? Those are all the hues of lobsters that have showed up in fishermen’s traps, supermarket seafood tanks and scientists’ laboratories over the last year. The funky-colored crustaceans inspire headlines that trumpet their rarity, with particularly uncommon baby blue-tinted critters described by some as “cotton-candy colored” often estimated at 1 in 100 million. A recent wave of these curious colored lobsters in Maine and beyond has scientists asking just how atypical the discolored arthropods really are. It’s complicated. The best available estimates about lobster coloration abnormalities are based on data from fisheries sources, said marine sciences professor Markus Frederich of the University of New England in Maine. However, he said, “no one really tracks them.”