Mass. lobsterman finds Halloween-themed catch
BOSTONA lobster caught off the Massachusetts coast has avoided fate in the boiler pot because his highly unusual and seasonal black and orange coloring.
CBS Boston affiliate WBZ reports that Dana Duhaime, a lobsterman from Salem, caught the lobster just in time for Halloween (or even for San Francisco's World Series win) in his traps off Bakers Channel. He named the female, one-pound lobster "Pinchy," after the giant lobster who appears in a Simpsons TV episode.
Pinchy has an orange side and a black side, to the New England Aquarium. Bill Murphy, an aquarium biologist, picked up the crustacean on Sunday, Aquarium officials told WBZ.
The New England Aquarium says that 2012 has been an exception year for discovering strangely colored lobsters, from yellows to blues to calicos.
Pinchy's coloring is known as a "split," which are even more bizarre because they feature two distinct colors on each side. Split lobsters are roughly estimated to occur once in every 50 to 100 million lobsters.
WBZ reports that after a quarantine period, the lobster will either be on exhibit in one of the aquarium's habitat tanks or used for live animal presentations, the aquarium said.