The region’s run of weird lobsters continues today at the New England Aquarium, which announced that it has taken in a yellow-orange arthropod that is far rarer that the brilliant blue lobster pulled from Maine waters last weekend by a teenage trapper.
The aquarium — which boasts a blue lobster of its own — distributed an image of the newcomer with some of its other odd specimens.
The “welcoming committee” also included the “famous Halloween lobster, which is orange on one side and black on the other,” officials said in a statement.
The yellow lobster weighs 1½ pounds, and was pulled from a trap by Billy and Cheryl Souza of North Truro, the aquarium said. The pair found the unusual crustacean earlier this month, but left it in a secure trap for a few days so its eggs could disperse.
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Blue lobsters, though striking, appear at a frequency of about one in 2 million, researchers say. The yellow-orange lobster is closer to one in 30 million. White lobsters are the rarest of all.
The retrieval of a blue lobster last weekend drew attention across the country, after 14-year-old Meghan LaPlante pulled it from the water near Old Orchard Beach in Maine.
LaPlante, who has a summer job with her parents at Miss Meghan’s Lobster Catch, donated her find to the Maine State Aquarium.
As statistically rare as these off-colored lobsters are, chances are that they all will show up at least once every few years. In Maine alone, statistics show that fishing operations took in almost 126 million pounds of lobster in 2013.
