July 25, 2016 — When a local restaurant hosts a lobster party this weekend, it won’t be the usual bake with clams.
Instead s’mores will be served and a special crustacean will be freed from the eatery’s saltwater tank and returned to the sea.
Earlier this week, lobsterman Dean Mould was pulling traps aboard the FV Dominatrix, when he discovered something unusual. When he offloaded his catch at Capt. Joe & Sons on East Main Street, the prize landed there.
It was a blue lobster, a color that only one in 1 million to 2 million lobsters have, according to scientists. Tony LaCasse, a spokesman for the New England Aquarium, said the blue color may be due to genetics, or diet. Diet — a missing protein — is the more likely culprit when there is a bunch of blue lobsters caught in the same area, he said.
Lacasse says more blues have been popping up in the last three or four years, and blue is the most common of the unusual colors lobsters may show, with white being the rarest. “But it’s still pretty uncommon, and personally my favorite.”