Thought lobsters were red? Extremely rare BLUE crustacean is caught off Maine coast

[steve2470]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2734109/Extremely-rare-blue-lobster-estimated-1-2-million-caught-coast-Maine.html

[Arkansas Granny]

1. Good grief!!! It looks radioactive!

[Aristus]

2. The Blue Lobster. A new comic book superhero coming soon!...

[In_The_Wind]

5. Blue Claws are on backorder.

[Aristus]

6. YOWZA!

Save me, Blue Lobster! Save me!

[Sanity Claws]

3. Blue? The poor thing must have been cold.

The waters off Maine are really cold you know.

[The Second Stone]

4. Humbolt Cal State had one many years ago, a really big and old

one in one of their labs that I got to see. Quite a sight. I wonder why nobody breeds for the blue trait.

[OriginalGeek]

7. Isn't that the jerk

who posted the list of all the times his wife didn't have sex with him?

[trof]

8. But they're all red when they're 'done'.

[marzipanni]

9. They are almost all greenish brown before cooking, which makes the carapace turn orange-red

an albino lobster-

[LiberalElite]

10. Aren't they mostly black - until they're cooked. nt

[eppur_se_muova]

11. Cooking denatures protein-pigment complex which has a blue-gray color, only red pigment survives ...

the same red pigment is found in other crustaceans, including shrimp, and is responsible for the red color of salmon, which eat the shrimp but don't metabolize the pigment.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/31483/why-do-crabs-and-lobsters-turn-red-when-you-cook-them
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astaxanthin

[pinboy3niner]

13. I still don't know why Copper River Sockeye have the reddest flesh

But I don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

[clarice]

14. Neigh.....you should never do that. nt

[Scuba]

12. Crikey, mate, she's a 'beaut!

[hifiguy]

15. Blue lobsters, you say? What about Zoidberg??

[DFW]

16. In the fish shops on Cape Cod you see them occasionally

I saw one about 5 or 6 pounds in July. Besides the fact that I could never kill one myself, this thing had to have been 20 or 30 years old to get this big. I was almost tempted to buy it and then take it to the ocean (about 4 minutes away by car) and set it free. Only trouble is, there are so many lobster traps, it would probably just get caught again within a day or two.