Rare cotton-candy blue lobster caught

A lobster with an unusual cotton candy blue coloration pattern was caught in Passamaquoddy Bay off the coast of Perry on Tuesday, October 19. Lobsterman Eric Francis of Pleasant Point made the catch while aboard the boat Bug Zappah.
"It was pretty exhilarating," Francis says of the moment he spotted the light blue and purple tones. The lobster was in the first trap opened of the day, heightening the excitement even further.
Lobsters come in different colors due to genetic variations. Specific colors are more rare, while patterns are rarer still. A blue lobster appears at an estimated rate of one in every two million lobsters, calicos appear every 30 million, and split colors occur only once every 50 million. The rarest color of all for lobsters is pure white, which has only a one in a 100 million chance of appearing.
Lobsters with unusual color patterns stick out visibly on the ocean floor and are more likely to be eaten by predators as a result. This makes the chances of pulling in a surviving rare colored lobster even lower.
In this case, the blue and light purple lobster was a male with a tail width of about 3 1/2 inches, Francis says.
An experienced lobsterman who began his trade 10 years ago in a kayak, Francis says he has never caught a blue lobster or known of others who have caught one with a cotton candy color blend.
Diane Cowan, senior scientist and founder of the Lobster Conservancy in Friendship, describes Francis' catch as "extremely rare," but adds that, to her knowledge, the science to determine how precisely rare color variations are hasn't yet been done. Cowan handles a variety of unusually colored lobsters in her work studying lobsters near their natural habitat.
Where the lobster will go next is yet to be determined. Francis is hoping the lobster will be adopted by an aquarium or lab in recognition of its rare appearance and has contacted various locations to that effect.
According to Cowan, if the lobster is donated to the Lobster Conservancy, "he will live in the wild. Maybe he would stay in our 6.5 acre mesocosm, but only if and for as long as he wants to." She says that she wouldn't necessarily recommend this option for this particular lobster, as some lobsters are known to return to their homes when they are displaced. "It's a long trek from Muscongus Bay to Passamaquoddy Bay."
At an aquarium such as the New England Aquarium or the one at Woods Hole, "he will be pampered," Cowan says. Either location is well suited for "allowing a particularly handsome male lobster to teach children and others about lobster life."