Two rare orange lobsters delivered to Hudson seafood market find new home at Clearwater Marine Aquarium
Two rare orange lobsters were found in the same shipment to Whitney's Seafood Market in Hudson, Florida.
CLEARWATER, Fla. - Twice a week, a Pasco County seafood markets get a shipment of lobster straight from Maine. Recently, they got not one, but two orange-colored lobsters. Now, the rare pair will be living out their days at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium.
According to the Maine Lobstermen's Community Alliance, your chance of finding a lobster is about one in two million, while the rarest lobster is white — with the odds of finding one at only one in 100 million. The chances of finding an orange lobster, meanwhile, is said to be one in 30 million.
In late August, Whitney's Seafood Market in Hudson made the remarkable discovery when two ended up in their shipment.
Now, they have made the move to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, where habitat was built specifically for them.
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"Due to their rare color and lack of camouflage, they will be calling CMA home!," according to a Facebook post from the aquarium.
Whitney said in her 13 years of working with lobsters, this is the first time she's ever seen one orange lobster, let alone two.
Whitney said the crustaceans were saved from the steamer. Before they left for the aquarium, she named them "Sonny" and "Cher."
They're arrival in Pasco County comes on the heels of two other recent orange lobster finds, which is leading researchers to question if the brightly colored lobsters aren't as rare as they've been thought to be.
One of the two rare orange lobsters that were found in the same shipment to Whitney's Seafood Market in Hudson, Florida.
Last month, a bright orange lobster was rescued from a Red Lobster restaurant in South Florida, earning the nickname "Cheddar" after the chain's biscuits. Cheddar was then sent off to Ripley's Aquarium in South Carolina to be protected from predators — and from the dinner plate.
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A few weeks later, a second orange lobster was found at another Red Lobster restaurant in Mississippi. This one earned the name "Biscuit," and was sent to Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies in Tennessee.
One of the two rare orange lobsters that were found in the same shipment to Whitney's Seafood Market in Hudson, Florida.
"Orange lobsters are uncommon but perhaps not as rare as we first thought," said Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies Director of Husbandry, Jared Durrett, in a statement. "Lobsters obtain their color through the pigments they ingest in their diet. If these orange lobsters are being harvested from the same region, perhaps their localized diet contains a pigment that, when paired with the lobster's genetics, creates the orange coloration we are seeing."
Red Lobster later confirmed that both Cheddar and Biscuit had been harvested from the same fishing area. Ripley's and Red Lobster are now partnering to collect data from local fishermen to see if the unusual coloring is indeed based on what the lobsters are eating.
