09/16/2021 3:16 PM
Clarín.com
International
Updated 09/16/2021 3:16 PM
An
extremely rare
blue lobster was
discovered by a fisherman
off the Cornish coast of England before returning it to the sea.
Tom Lambourn
, 25, of Newlyn, was fishing off the seaside town of Penzance when he caught the colorful
meter-long
crustacean
on his lobster pot.
The fisherman photographed the rare creature, "one in two million", before returning it to the sea as it was "too small to take ashore."
He said, "I've certainly never seen one of that color," he said.
"This was only my second fishing season, so I think I was very lucky. I measured it and it was not the right size, so I never thought about keeping it," he told the British newspaper Daily Mail.
The blue lobster found in England.
"If it had been bigger, I would have taken it. I sent the photos to the company where I work and they told me it was one in two million, so it's very special."
A spokesman for the National Lobster Hatchery in Padstow, Cornwall said: "It's a pretty rare color to find, a one in two million chance, so we were surprised when Tom sent us the photo."
Ben Marshall, supervisor of the national lobster hatchery, said: "It is very, very rare and very interesting to see a blue lobster."
Blue lobsters have different pigmentation on their shells, which means that
it is much more difficult for them to camouflage themselves,
so they are easy prey, which reduces their numbers. "
The strange specimen, one for every two million lobsters.
In 2005, Professor Ronald Christensen of the University of Connecticut discovered that blue lobsters acquired their color as a result of a
genetic defect.
The defect causes lobsters to produce excessive levels of a protein that combines with a red carotenoid molecule known as astaxanthin.
This forms a blue complex known as crustacyanin and is what gives lobsters their unusual color.
Dr. Christensen then stated: "I suspect that more blue locusts are born than we think, but they do not survive because they become the main target of predators."
In 2016, fisherman Keith Setter caught a blue lobster in Ladram Bay, off the Devon coast, before returning it to the sea.
And in 2011 two fishermen from Dorset, also in England, managed to catch an albino lobster, or "crystal", near Portland Bill before turning the rare creatures over to a specialized research facility.
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