Fisherman Blair Doucette shows off his once-in-a-lifetime ocean haul as he pulled a rare blue lobster out of PEI waters June 1, 2011.Karen George
Fisherman Blair Doucette pulled this rare blue lobster out of the waters off Prince Edward Island's north shore on Wednesday. He is keeping the animal in a tank at his house, and plans to donate it to a local aquarium. Mr. Doucette's find is the first in his more than three decades of fishing and believed to be the first time since 2009 that one of the azure creates has been found off PEI. Just one lobster out of millions is blue, the result of a genetic mutation that causes a protein to bind to the crustacean's pigment and change its colour. But its uniqueness stops at the kitchen: heat breaks down the pigment, turning the animal the same red colour as any other cooked lobster.