different colored lobsters being found.. and earlier I read that there wer a huge amount of lobsters being caught this year but no young were visible
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/06/2-albino-lobsters-1-week-maine_n_5776618.htmlLobstermen Catch 2 Albino Lobsters In 1 Week (PHOTOS)
AP
Posted: 09/06/2014 9:09 am EDT Updated: 09/06/2014 9:59 am EDT
S HEAD, Maine (AP) — It's no white lie: Two lobstermen in Maine caught a pair of rare albino lobsters within a week.
The Portland Press Herald reports (
http://bit.ly/1qlk6Dn) Bret Philbrick caught the curious crustacean off of Owls Head on Thursday and Joe Bates caught one off the Rockland breakwater days earlier. Albino lobsters are believed to be about one in 100 million.
The lobsters are in a crate at Owls Head Lobster Co. One will go to the Maine State Aquarium in Boothbay Harbor and the other to Brooks Trap Mill in Thomaston. The lobsters are under legal size and would normally have to be returned to the ocean but the Marine Patrol made an exception.
Bates also caught a one-in-30 million yellow lobster on Monda
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http://www.bostonglobe.com/2014/08/25/maine-blue-lobster-find-could-one-million/8zwXkJrnC8Je95KoHtStTM/story.htmlMaine blue lobster find could be 1 in 2 million
Teenager found specimen in trap off Maine coast
By Andy Rosen
| Globe Staff August 25, 2014
Miss Meghan’s Lobster Catch
Meghan LaPlante showed off her blue lobster.
A young Maine lobsterwoman pulled up a surprising find as she checked her traps this weekend: a striking blue crustacean that scientists say could be a 1 in 2 million specimen.
Meghan LaPlante, 14, who has a summer job with her parents at Miss Meghan’s Lobster Catch in Old Orchard Beach, said she was excited and surprised to see the unusual lobster. She has found other interesting catches — including a 6-pounder that she had to throw back because of its size, but nothing like this.
knew that it was definitely rare, but I actually have never seen any other unordinary lobster,” said LaPlante, who is about to start her freshman year in high school. She and her dad have been lobstering many summer afternoons this year.
The catch Saturday drew attention from around the country, in part because it’s so out of the ordinary to find live American lobsters that are any other color than the dark blue and greenish-brown commonly seen in New England’s restaurant tanks.
According to the Lobster Institute at the University of Maine in Orono, blue lobsters like the one LaPlante found are rare. The color comes from a genetic defect that leads to excessive production of a particular protein.
But the institute says that some colors are even rarer in live lobsters, including the bright red typically found when the shellfish are cooked. Those odds are 1 in 10 million. Yellow lobsters are even rarer, at 1 in 30 million.
In 2012, a lobster showed up at Jasper White’s Summer Shack in Cambridge with a blue-brown and orange, marbled “calico” pattern. The odds of such a find are also 1 in 30 million. A similar lobster appeared July 23 in New Hampshire’s Hampton Harbor.
But the Lobster Institute says the rarest lobsters of all, at 1 in 100 million, are albino — or crystal — lobsters that have no coloration at all.
For her part, LaPlante said she will donate her rare blue lobster to the Maine State Aquarium.
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edit to add this
http://www.mpbn.net/Home/tabid/36/ctl/ViewItem/mid/5347/ItemId/32500/~/Default.aspx?tabid=425Marketing Maine Lobster: Effort Intensifies Amid Big Harvests
02/28/2014 Reported By: Jay Field
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Maine's lobster catch topped 100-million pounds again last year - proof that the surging supply of the state's signature seafood shows no signs of dropping off. A shortage of markets for all that product in recent years has depressed the prices fishermen earn for their catch at the dock. But a new multi-million dollar marketing push, launched last year, aims to strenghten the Maine lobster's brand identity and get the crustacean into many more markets. Jay Field hit the Fishermen's Forum in Rockport this morning, where state officials gave an update on the effort.
edit ...more to addhttp://www.pressherald.com/2014/09/05/owls-head-pound-lands-two-albino-lobsters/Albino lobsters — the rarest of all the crustacean’s color mutations — are believed to be about one in 100 million.
So, what are the odds of two midcoast lobstermen catching two albino lobsters within a week for the same lobster pound?
Maybe too unlikely to be true.
On Thursday, lobsterman Bert Philbrick caught a white lobster off Owls Head, less than a week after Joe Bates caught one about a mile off the Rockland breakwater. The pair look ghostly compared to the greenish-brown lobsters that normally come up in traps along the coast.
The white shells naturally led to the conclusion that the lobsters were ultra-rare albinos. But Bob Bayer, executive director of the University of Maine’s Lobster Institute, isn’t so sure.
Bayer said he’s only seen a couple of albino lobsters in his lifetime.
“We get blues (and) we get red ones every summer. That’s not a big deal. This is,” he said, if they’re actually albino.
Looking at a picture, however, Bayer said, it seemed at least one, if not both, have a blueish hue.
“I don’t think they’re albinos. It looks like there’s some pigmentation there,” he said.
Still, whatever they are is highly unusual, said Bayer. “It’s nothing I’ve seen before.”
Neither has Bates, who has 300 traps off Rockland and has been lobstering since 1990. He also caught a yellow lobster Monday, estimated to be one in 30 million, but that wasn’t a first.
“I was surprised. Shocked, actually,” he said about the seeing the white lobster in his trap.
Both white lobsters were under legal size — about 5 or 6 years old, estimated Terry Watkinson, owner of the Owls Head Lobster Co., where the fishermen brought their rare catches.
Normally, that would mean they’d have to be thrown back into the ocean to mature for another year or two. But the Maine Marine Patrol occasionally makes exceptions.
On Friday, they were still floating in a crate at the Owls Head lobster pound. They wouldn’t be for long.
One was claimed by Brooks Trap Mill, a Thomaston lobstering supply store with a tank full of marine life. The other is destined for the Maine State Aquarium in Boothbay Harbor, adding to the spectrum of colored lobsters already on display there.
That’s where a blue lobster caught two weeks ago off Pine Point in Scarborough was taken. Blue lobsters are estimated by the Lobster Institute to be one in 2 million.
Earlier this year, a lobsterman pulled a one-in-30 million calico lobster, sporting patches of orange and dark blue on its shell, out of a trap in New Hampshire. It was sent to a Hampton aquarium. In late July, a bright yellow lobster of unknown origin ended up in a supermarket tank in Florida, where a customer bought it and sent it to an aquarium in Rye, New Hampshire.
But all of those colorful catches would pale in comparison to coming across an elusive albino, let alone two.
That’s even considering that the estimates of how rare each color is are “an absolute guess,” Bayer admitted.
If more similar-looking lobsters are caught in the area, he said, there’s probably been “some sort of unusual breeding.”
As for the lobsters caught this week, Bayer said he would like to see them stay around for a while and get fed food high in carotenoids, like crab and periwinkles. Such food will darken the shell, if they’re not albino.
A quicker test would be to cook them. True albinos would stay white, Bayer said.
But no one’s suggesting that.
and I am not going into any of the oceans now....sigh