All Over Albany

Hey, that lobster looks like it's been... wait, no, it just moved

Today's moment of odd seafood: Price Chopper reports it recently received three rare orange lobsters as part its regular shipment of lobster. You know, they kind of looked like they'd been cooked, but... weren't. (Here's a closer look.)

The unusually-hued crustaceans ended up at three stores in New York: Guilderland, Middletown, and Binghamton. The lobsters will be held in the stores until later this week, when the company says they'll be sent to aquariums. (Somewhere an Albany Aquarium proponent is sighing at the missed opportunity.)

Update July 3: More orange lobsters have turned up at Price Choppers -- two in Glens Falls, and one near Syracuse. [Syracuse.com]

Price Chopper gets its lobsters from Canada, via a Cape Cod-based company called, appropriately, Lobster Trap. A PC spokesperson tells us that the company's VP of seafood merchandising has never seen an orange lobster in his 17 years with the supermarket chain -- and their contact at the Lobster Trap has only seen one in 33 years.

Lobsters are typically a mottled brown/green color. Exceptions -- whether they're orange or blue or some other color -- were considered extraordinarily rare. But that doesn't seem to be the case lately -- the AP reported last year that the number of unusually colored lobsters appears to be on a noticeable upswing, though nobody's really sure exactly why. Theories range from increased natural variation, to bigger lobster harvests, to increased opportunities for reporting (mobile phone cameras + Twitter). Just this last month there were 35 orange lobsters in a catch from Nova Scotia. [CBC] [AP/CS Monitor] [Wikipedia] [CBC]

Maybe the strangest of the recently strange lobsters: a half black/half orange "Halloween" lobster that turned up in Salem, Massachusetts last October. The color divide is bilateral and is so sharp that it looks fake. [New England Aquarium]

The different colors are caused by genetic quirks, but the lobsters are apparently normal in every other way -- including taste. Though most of the media reports about the unusual lobsters mention that they're being diverted from the boiling pot. [NatGeo]

Maybe word has gotten back to the lobsters...

photo: Price Chopper