Rare Two-Colored Lobster Caught By Fishermen Off Cape Cod Donated To Aquarium

It may have been a divided lobster, but it united New Englanders in admiration.

A Cape Cod seafood company donated a rare bicolored lobster to a science center and preserved the creature from its kettle because of its striking coloration. The lobster found is typically brown on one side and bright orange on the other, with a two-tone pattern running from its head to its tail.

Representatives of the Wellfleet Shellfish Company in Eastham, Massachusetts, said in a statement Monday that they have been investigating the shellfish for days. The company said it gifted the lobster to the Woods Hole Science Aquarium in Falmouth, Massachusetts, and that it will be on public display when the aquarium reopens.

“The lobster is currently housed with the Woods Hole Science Aquarium’s animals in holding tanks at the Marine Biological Laboratory during the aquarium’s construction period. When the aquarium reopens, the lobster will be on display, offering visitors a rare look at one of the ocean’s most striking natural anomalies,” the shellfish company said in a statement.

Fishermen caught the lobster off Cape Cod on April 16. Oddly colored lobsters often make their way to New England docks in spring and summer, but two-colored specimens are rarer than most.

American lobsters are usually a mottled brown, but they can experience color abnormalities due to gene mutations that affect the proteins that bind to their pigments. Some are blue or orange, some are spotted calico, and some are so brightly colored that they are called “cotton candy” lobsters.

A two-colored lobster could form because two lobster eggs merge and grow as a single animal, Markus Frederich, a professor of marine sciences at the University of New England in Maine, told The Associated Press in 2024. There are estimates about the rarity of different lobster colors, but Frederich cautioned that these figures are approximate.

On Cape Cod, Wellfleet Shellfish Company said it considered the bicolored lobster a “remarkable and exciting discovery.”