Sustainability Environment

Extremely rare animal caught and photographed by fisherman

Story at a glance

  • While lobsters are often brown or green when caught and turn red when cooked, a rare genetic mutation will make some blue or yellow.
  • A fisherman in southwestern England caught a blue lobster and released it back into the wild.
  • The photo was shared by the U.K.’s National Lobster Hatchery, which works to preserve and maintain the country’s lobster population.

Fisherman Tom Lambourn became the lucky one in perhaps millions of people who will ever see a blue lobster when he pulled one out of the sea off the Cornish Coast earlier this month. 


READ MORE STORIES FROM CHANGING AMERICA

NEW STUDY EXPLAINS WHY NEARLY 20 PERCENT OF ELECTRIC CAR OWNERS RETURN TO GAS

25,000 BARRELS OF TOXIC DDT FOUND DUMPED IN OCEAN OFF CALIFORNIA

‘I’M NOT YOUR FOOD’ JOGGER TELLS BEAR TO TALK HIS WAY OUT OF ATTACK

WHEN BOBCAT ATTACKS, HUSBAND SAVES HIS WIFE’S LIFE


The photos were shared by the National Lobster Hatchery, a U.K.-based marine conservation, research and education charity, which allows you to adopt your own baby lobster and track where it is released off the coast of Cornwall. Warming waters and rising sea levels are threatening lobster populations in some parts of the world, including the United States, where their numbers have been dwindling in the New England region.  

The crustacean was too small to bring into land, the National Lobster Hatchery said, so it was released back into the sea. The bright blue lobster is pretty rare, making headlines when fishermen happen to catch sight of the genetic mutation, estimated to be 1 in 2 million, according to the British Broadcasting Channel, and others, such as yellow lobsters, are estimated to be 1 in 30 million. 


America is changing faster than ever! Add Changing America to your Facebook or Twitter feed to stay on top of the news.


“The American lobster is usually a sort of greeny-brown, so anything bright blue would look very odd to fishermen there,” says Charlie Ellis, a researcher at the National Lobster Hatchery, told BBC in 2016. “But European lobsters tend to be a duller blue colour. The real sort of iridescent blue is still rare here, but the difference is that, to a European fisherman, it will seem less completely out of the ordinary than it would seem to a North American.”

Lambourn’s catch was especially “vibrant,” the hatchery noted, and in the comments, others shared their own blue lobster sightings, including spotted blue lobsters, and mused about whether such lobsters would retain their color after casting their shell. 

“It depends – some of them do it due to the colour morph genetically (Which is when they stay the same!) but most the time they are able to vary their colour and patterns due to their habitat (We think!),” the hatchery responded. 


WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE RIGHT NOW

BIDEN PROMISES TO CUT US EMISSIONS IN HALF IN LESS THAN 10 YEARS AHEAD OF WORLD CLIMATE SUMMIT

SCIENTISTS SAY ‘UNIMAGINABLE AMOUNTS’ OF WATER WILL POUR INTO OCEANS IF ICE SHELVES COLLAPSE AMID GLOBAL HEATING

NEW STUDY SAYS THE EARTH COULD SEE SIX MONTH-LONG SUMMERS

SURPRISING STUDY FINDS SHARKS ARE KEY TO RESTORING DAMAGED HABITATS, FIGHTING CLIMATE CHANGE

SCIENTISTS BLOW UP DECADES OF THINKING ON WHY HURRICANES ARE BECOMING MORE DEADLY


 


Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Changing america