Shellfish Surprise: Aquarium Unveils Blue, Calico and Pumpkin Lobsters

There's a rainbow of rarity on display at a Connecticut aquarium, as lobsters of some truly different hues share a tank for perhaps the first time ever.


There's a blue one, a pumpkin-colored one and even a calico critter just to spice things up.

"It's the colors of fall," said Dave Sigworth, spokesman for the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, Conn., which has the unique trio on display.

The odds of seeing these three together are roughly 1 in 900 quintillion -- but a series of timely donations has allowed Connecticut's Maritime Aquarium to put together one of the most unusual lobster displays ever. While the blue lobster is a one in a million catch, the orange and calico are even rarer -- with the odds of finding them roughly 1 in 30 million.

The blue lobster is the most common of the lot -- the odds of finding one of those are merely 1 in a million. Sigworth says the aquarium is offered a blue lobster roughly once a year.

But the odds of finding an orange or calico lobster are around 1 in 30 million -- each.

"I wasn't even aware you could have an orange one," Sigworth said. "The chances of seeing them together at one time in one tank are astronomical."

In fact, Norwalk Community College math professor Joe Karnowski told the Republican-American newspaper that the odds of seeing all three together are 1 in 900 quintillion -- so you might say the Maritime Aquarium hit the shellfish jackpot.

Sigworth said the lobsters were donated by local seafood markets and lobstermen who realized they had some truly special shellfish.

But like people, the colors of the lobsters run only shell deep -- inside, they're the same as any other lobster.

"They're completely normal lobsters in every other way," Sigworth said. "If you put them in a pot of boiling water, they would turn red like any other lobster. And from what I understand, they would taste the same."

Nearly 100 million pounds of lobster are caught in U.S. waters annually, with most of them -- 78 million pounds last year -- caught off Maine, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.

While lobster populations are abundant in the Gulf of Maine and nearby Georges Bank, they've suffered from a combination of overfishing and warmer waters in southern New England, where just 15 million lobsters are estimated to remain, down from 35 million a decade ago.

Some experts have even proposed a five-year ban on lobster fishing from Massachusetts' Cape Cod to Virginia to help the population recover -- a move opposed by local fishermen, who say jobs would be lost.

Ed Mazza Contributor