Lobsters are crustacean that live in the ocean. It can be found anywhere in this world and prefer to live in rocky or sandy bottom of shoreline. This creature is considered as one of immortal animals who live on this earth.
For some of you, maybe lobster is a kind of favorite dish. indeed, this creature well known to be a high-class seafood. But these two lobsters are different from any lobsters you’ve met before. Here we tell you a story about Lucky and its companion, the “tattooed” lobster.
These lobsters are the rarest to have ever been caught and maybe just one of its kind. So, after knowing these two lobsters, are you sure you are going to consume them?
Lucky, The 1 In 100 Million Lobster
Meet Lucky, the translucent lobster from Grand Manan, New Brunswick, Canada. You may have seen common red lobsters, blue lobsters or yellow lobsters, but Lucky is different from them. It has almost rainbow-like colors that makes him unique.
Lucky was caught by a fisherman named Robinson Russell when he was fishing in Tuesday, Nov. 21. “We were just pulling traps when some guy was like, ‘Whoa, look at this,'” he said to CBC News. “We all stopped what we were doing for a minute to check it out.”
Lucky is considered as an albino lobster because it lacks pigments in its shells, and an albino lobster is the rarest one to be found in nature. Lobster Institute at University of Maine even said that the chance of an albino lobster to exists is only one in 100 million.
Robinson Russell, as the one who caught the lobster named it Lucky because “anything that is one in 100 million is pretty lucky”. Even the head of Lobster Institute mentioned earlier, Robert C. Bayer, said that the chance of someone to win lottery is higher than finding it.
After being caught by Russel, Lucky the translucent lobster has now found a new home, a restaurant in Grand Manan called harbor Grille. But rather than cooking it and serve it on a table, Russell decided to put it on a display and label it “not for sale”.
However, Lucky is not the only translucent lobster ever been caught. Back in September, Alex Todd, a fisherman for 40 years also successfully caught another translucent lobster. But Todd decided to throw it back to the ocean.
Surprisingly, days later, the lobster was caught again. This time, Todd’s uncle who caught the translucent unnamed lobster. “We released it and last week he caught it again and re-released it so it’s still hanging around,” said Todd to The Guardian.
Both of the lobsters have similar feature, the shell is translucent but still seem a little bit bluish. According to the characteristic, the lobsters are considered to suffer from a genetic condition.
The condition is called leucism which cause a partial loss of pigmentation in its shells. That’s why in those lobsters still have hints of color on their shells.
The Pepsi Lobster
Do you have any tattoos on your body? Well it is common for us human to have tattoos on our body indeed. But what if you catch a lobster with a tattoo on its body? That’s the story of the “Pepsi Lobster” which has a Pepsi “tattoo” on its claw.
The same as Lucky this Pepsi Lobster was found in the waters of Grand Manan, New Brunswick, Canada. The lobster was caught by Karissa Lindstrand and the tattoo was found out when Linstrand tried to band its claw.
“I was like: ‘Oh, that’s a Pepsi can. It looked like it was a print put right on the lobster claw,” she said as quoted from The Guardian. She easily recognized the “tattoo” because she uses to drink the soda in daily basis.
The tattoo itself doesn’t look like it is something stuck in the claw, but more like it has been imprinted into the claw and becomes the color of that part of the claw. “I’m still trying to wrap my brain around what exactly it was,” told Lindstrand.
Indeed, it is confusing to see such thing, because it doesn’t usually occur naturally. How can a natural lobster who had never been exposed to such man-made object could develop such detailed image on its claw?
A theory said that the tattoo appeared from the molding process of the lobster that used to live near Pepsi can or something with such picture. The lobster then developed similar picture as part of its “camouflage” with the environment around it.
Another suggestion said that a picture of the Pepsi can got stuck in the claw when the molding process took place. Thus, the picture then got covered with outer layer of the lobster’s shell and make it seem like a tattoo.
Lindstrand herself believes that the tattoo came from a picture of the can because it looks a little bit pixelated. However, the source of the picture remains a mystery, because if it was a piece of paper, it would have destroyed by the water before it could touch the claw of this lobster.
Thx for the nightmares…this hermit crab used a discarded doll’s head as shell pic.twitter.com/yxsBZUPnf3
— Falen (@falenkdwb) September 8, 2017
The discovery of Pepsi tattoo on a lobster’s claw have attracted attentions from all over the globe, concerning on the amount of trashes in the ocean. This occurrence reminds people back to the time when a biologist in Pitcairn Island found a hermit crab that uses a doll head as its home.
It is no wonder if in we find other shocking discovery from other sea creatures that have been contaminated with trashes like those two creatures. Data showed that the amount of plastic debris in the ocean which get ingested by sea animals each year is around 5 to 13 million tons.
While the amount of trashes keeps adding up each year. For plastic waste alone, the amount is already shocking with 12 million tons addition each year. If nothing changes, the famous sailor Dame Ellen MacArthur warn the world that in 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish.
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