For the second time in less than a month, a “1 in 30 million” lobster defied becoming dinner after being saved Monday from a Southern seafood restaurant tank.
Last month, a rare orange lobster christened Cheddar was rescued from a Red Lobster in Hollywood, Florida. Named in honor of the chain’s signature biscuits, the crustacean soon found haven at Ripley’s Aquarium of Myrtle Beach.
On Monday, another carrot-colored crustacean beat the odds after being saved from a Red Lobster in Meridian, Mississippi. In a continued theme, Ripley’s Aquariums dubbed the lobster Biscuit, spokesperson Sabrina Sieck confirmed to USA TODAY.
With Biscuit’s addition, Ripley’s now has three “1 in 30 million” lobsters including Pinchy, an orange lobster rescued from a grocery store by Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada.
Another was found at a Tops Market grocery store in Manlius, New York, in July. The store’s general manager, Joe Rizzo, said the store’s seafood department thought someone had shipped them a cooked lobster at first, before they took it out and “found out it was alive,” he told the Utica Observer-Dispatch, part of the USA TODAY Network.
On the heels of the latest lobster find, Sieck said, Ripley’s Aquariums and Red Lobster announced they were teaming to study them and better understand the anomaly.
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“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 the 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 told USA TODAY Biscuit is from the same fishing area as Cheddar, supporting the theory that this uptick in unusual coloration has to do with what the lobsters are eating.
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“We plan to dive deeper into this and study the reasons why this abnormality is occurring more often,” Durrett said. “Our partnership with Red Lobster will allow us to capture data from fishermen, which typically is not easy to come by due to confidentiality.”
“On the rare occasion we receive a lobster like Biscuit, we have to ask, why” said Nicole Bott, senior director of communications at Red Lobster. “We are hearing from our fishermen in the area where both Cheddar and Biscuit were caught that they are seeing a lot of orange lobsters this time of year. This seems to indicate the coloring is coming from a different food source. We’re excited to support Ripley’s research into this and learn more about our changing lobster populations.”
\Biscuit was being moved to its new home on Monday, Sieck said. The crustacean will be on display at Ripley’s Aquarium later this year, she said.
Natalie Neysa Alund covers trending news for USA TODAY. Reach her at nalund@usatoday.com and follow her on Twitter @nataliealund.
