Rare two-toned lobster caught off Nova Scotia

Linda Nguyen, Canwest News Service

A Nova Scotia fisherman made a rare catch this week when he hauled up a two-toned lobster in St. Mary's Bay.

The lobster is divided into two colours straight down the middle of its back -- dull green on one side and bright orange on the other.

The fisherman who owns the trap the female lobster was caught in has named it Jay after his son, who hauled it on board their boat on Jan. 8.

Jay the lobster has been donated to the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Dartmouth, N.S., as an educational exhibit.

"We got the call [Thursday] about the lobster," Doug Pezzack, a lobster biologist with the institute said Friday. "It's a very uncommon catch. Every year, 20 to 30 million lobsters are trapped [in the area] and we only hear about one or two of these a year."

Pezzack said the fisherman had to get special permission from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to keep the lobster because of its small size.

It measures just 83 millimeters from eye to tail, and weighs 0.36 kilograms.

Typically, lobsters are a mishmash of greens and blues, but Pezzack said sometimes strange lobsters like Jay are discovered, or even rarer ones that are bright blue, all orange or albino.

Pezzack thinks this particular lobster has a genetic mutation.

"Something happened during the development when the egg splits in half," he said. "The genetics on one side stays normal, but the other side turns red."

Jean Lavalle, a clinical scientist with the Lobster Science Centre in P.E.I., said the colouring may also have something to do with the lobster's diet.

"It's a genetic fluke type of thing," he said. "The diet can affect their colouring, depending on what they're feeding on. Lobsters eat just about anything. They're scavengers and will eat dead fish, but they're also active hunters and will go after live prey whether it's a crab, jellyfish or a sea urchin."

Sometimes genetically mutated lobsters can revert to their original colouring after being taken out of their natural habitats and put into aquariums.

Most two-toned lobsters that are discovered are also hermaphrodites, he added.

"We actually see them as hermaphrodites, with one side having female genital organs and the other side male," Lavalle said. "But we don't know if both organs are working or not."

Jay the lobster is "pure female" and about eight years old.