The odds of being struck by lightning this year are roughly one in 960,000, an infinitesimal chance of being in the exact wrong place at the exact wrong time.
Still, those odds are nothing compared to the one in 2 million chance a person has of ever encountering a rare, blue lobster, an almost mythical crustacean that turns bright indigo due to an overabundance of protein produced by a genetic defect.
So it’s pretty fortunate for Wayne Nickerson, a lobsterman in Plymouth, Massachusetts, to have managed to catch two in his career.
Back in 1990, Massachusetts-local Nickerson caught one of these ultra-rare blue lobsters. And this time, he beat the odds again by pulling out a 0.9-kilogram (2-pound), sky-blue lobster on his trawler off Cape Cod. After excitedly calling his wife from his boat, she named the lobster Bleu.
Fortunately for Bleu, he’s avoiding the boiling pot despite the high price on his head. He is currently being held in a tank and there are plans to donate him to a local aquarium.
Jan Nickerson, Wayne’s wife, told Boston Globe, “It was more brilliantly blue than the bluest hydrangea you’ve ever seen. It was almost fluorescent. It was almost glowing.”
On her Facebook post, Jan Nickerson writes “the people from the New England Aquarium are amazed he has made it to the size he is, in the ocean, as he is a target for predators. They do not usually make it, that is one reason they are rare.”
Catching a real-life equivalent of Clauncher is quite a feat. Although the bright blue body of the crustacean is unnatural-looking, it is actually caused by a naturally occurring, simple, genetic mutation. The brilliant coloring is caused by a change that causes the lobster’s exoskeleton to overproduce the protein crustacyanin. In normal-colored lobsters, this protein is what makes them greenish-brown.
Crustacyanin is destroyed when the lobster is boiled, leaving the familiar bright red color behind. If our blue mutant was bound for the dinner table, it would probably also turn red, as the blue proteins would break down into their individual parts, which appear red.
The Nickersons have already reached out to the New England Aquarium in Boston to find a permanent home for their blue lobster, so this little buddy isn’t going to be anyone’s dinner. Blue lobsters are considered lucky, and so most are donated to aquariums or set free.
Sources: OpposingViews, Boston Globe