A rare blue and pink pigmented lobster — referred to as a “cotton candy lobster” for its resemblance to the fluffy food’s color — was found on Friday in Casco Bay, Maine by a lobsterman for Get Maine Lobster.
“We were just hauling – as I’ve done for the last 40 years – and we just came across some lobsters in some traps… and there was a strange color in the trap,” lobsterman Bill Coppersmith said. “Didn’t know if it was a toy lobster or what the heck it was.”
National Geographic estimates only 1 in 100 million lobsters are cotton candy-colored, making lobsterman Coppersmith’s catch off the coast of Portland an extremely rare find.
“There’s an amazing color of the shell. If you rotate her in the light it’s like a gem,” Mark Murrell, founder, CEO, and Chief Curator of Get Maine Lobster said. “It’s like if you were looking at a beautiful gem. Her shell is like the inside of an oyster — it’s pearlish.”
Coppersmith — who has been a lobsterman for over 40 years — named the lobster “Haddie” after his 8-year-old granddaughter.
Cotton Candy lobsters get their unique color from genetic mutations. National Geographic reports a lobster’s “unusual diet” may also create the unique hues.
Haddie is a female lobster and probably around 7 years old, according to Murrell. She is now being kept in a tank at Get Maine Lobster until they can find a local aquarium or sanctuary to adopt Haddie.
Murrell said he had never seen — much less held — a cotton candy lobster before finding Haddie. Coppersmith and his crew had also never caught a cotton candy lobster.
“I work with a couple hundred [lobstermen],” Murrell said. “But I don’t know anybody directly who has ever caught a cotton.”
The blue northern Atlantic lobster consists of several shades of blue. Some are a very delicate blue almost approaching albino. Some are a light robins egg blue. There are those that are the bright blue often the most common color. Then there are those that are such a dark navy blute that from a short distance look black. There are lobsters that are 1/2 blue nose to senter of the tail, or yellow or red with the other half mostly being the common dark brownish green. There are some yellow lobsters with black spots that give them a leopard's apprearance.
Lobsters are interesting critters to work with. They have individual personalities with some being downright mean in tanks to the point of sneeking up behind a much larger one and bite the bigger one and kill it.
I've seen a lobster fed a fresh shrimp and devower the whole thing then when a second shrimp was added the lobster berried it for a later feeding very similar to a dog berrying a bone. Lobsters will rapidly utilize an automatic tank feeder set up with a hanging string with a red piece of onion bag that drops pellets when grabed and pulled with a quick claw snap.
If you see one at the ocean's edge and reach to grab it, it will either quickly flutter away or grab your hand with its claws and you will yell loudly as you run out of the water.
Maine lobsters, boiled, have a tast similar to boiled ocean shrimp but many times stronger.
The more southern sea critters have a lighter taste than those harvested in more northern ocean waters. Colder water with higher salinity may have something to do with the stronger northern flavor.
There are good reasons for adding salt and a bit of sugar to the water for boiling lobsters, crabs, and shrimp. Plain fresh water draws flavors out of the meat weakening the flavor. Same for crabs and shrimp too.
To each quart of water used to boil these critters in, add one tablespoon of salt and 1/8 teaspoon of sugar per quart of boiling water.
Remove the rubber claw bands before putting a lobster in the boiling pot. They will make the meat inside the shell they cover take on a strong rubber flavor. Once the lobsters are in the pot and the water starts to boil hard, set a timer for 16 minutes. Take lobsters out of the pot at 16 minutes and cool a bit before eating. Melted butter is good for dipping the lobster meat in. Everything that can be removed from the shell has something in it to eat. There are tools for cracking open lobster shells.
Best lobster I ever ate was in Green Turtle Key in the Bahamas. It was so remarkable I bought a case of frozen lobster tails from the restaurant. When I got home to TX., they weren't the same lobsters we'd eaten, and were disgusting. Ended up giving them away, however I wanted to toss them in the garbage, but was over-ruled.
Make Gitmo Great Again!! Who gave the order to stop counting votes in the swing states on the night of November 3/4, 2020?
Went to Maine two years ago for our anniversary. Lobster was on the priority list, naturally. Soon learned that while it is indeed tasty, it is certainly not worth what they charge for it. A "lobster roll" which is a few ounces of lobster on a 5-inch split bun was as much as $16 - and you'd need three or four of them to feel even half full. We passed on ordering whole ones. The tail and claws taste a lot like shrimp and less flavorful than crab. If it weren't for dredging it in butter, it'd be pretty bland.
We'll go back to Maine, for sure. But we'll skip the lobster.
Went to Maine two years ago for our anniversary. Lobster was on the priority list, naturally. Soon learned that while it is indeed tasty, it is certainly not worth what they charge for it. A "lobster roll" which is a few ounces of lobster on a 5-inch split bun was as much as $16 - and you'd need three or four of them to feel even half full. We passed on ordering whole ones. The tail and claws taste a lot like shrimp and less flavorful than crab. If it weren't for dredging it in butter, it'd be pretty bland.
We'll go back to Maine, for sure. But we'll skip the lobster.
Yankees love bland, 2 oz of Old Bay will last two generations.
Imagine a corporate oligarchy so effective, so advanced and fine tuned that its citizens still call it a democracy.
Went to Maine two years ago for our anniversary. Lobster was on the priority list, naturally. Soon learned that while it is indeed tasty, it is certainly not worth what they charge for it. A "lobster roll" which is a few ounces of lobster on a 5-inch split bun was as much as $16 - and you'd need three or four of them to feel even half full. We passed on ordering whole ones. The tail and claws taste a lot like shrimp and less flavorful than crab. If it weren't for dredging it in butter, it'd be pretty bland.
We'll go back to Maine, for sure. But we'll skip the lobster.
Yankees love bland, 2 oz of Old Bay will last two generations.
It’s the English stock. Everything is bland and over cooked to burnt !
‘TO LEARN WHO RULES OVER YOU, SIMPLY FIND OUT WHO YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO CRITICIZE’
Conspiracy theorists are the ones who see it all coming…
Had lobster last weekend in San Francisco. Don’t recall what restaurant it was as we hopped around to about a dozen trying things off the menu. It was good and sweet. Very flavorful.
Gawd you people make a mockery of a fine food. Lobster is a mild flavor to be sure but a darned fine one at that. You don't boil them you steam them in seaweed properly.
He put dat sheeit on mash potatoes, rolls, corn at Thanksgiving couple years back.
^^^THIS^^^
It's really good on deviled eggs or egg salad. Better yet, mix a little crab meat with your deviled egg filling and top it with Old Bay. Don't forget French fries, and fried chicken. My brother-in-law uses it on vanilla ice cream. It's good schit.
"Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem." Ronald Reagan
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