A Portland, Maine fisherman made an amazingly rare discovery when he realised he'd caught a blue lobster.
Described as a 'one in two million' type of animal, the incredibly rare crustacean has since been returned to the ocean.
While blue lobsters might be incredibly few and far between, the sheer amount of lobsters caught each year means a few are bound to turn up from time to time.
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There have been a few sightings of these eye-catching creatures over recent years, with one Red Lobster restaurant in Ohio even realising they were about to serve one up in 2020.
After contacting conservationists, the restaurant staff realised they had a wonderfully rare catch on their hands and sent the blue lobster, which they named 'Clawed', to a nearby zoo.
Spotting the rarity of the blue lobsters and saving them from the kitchen pot seems to be a common theme.
Blue lobsters have had close encounters in the UK, too. A Rochdale restaurant found one among their supplies last year and decided to spare him.
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Instead of chucking him in the pot, they called him Larry and handed him over to the Sea Life centre in Manchester, where the public can have a look at him.
The restaurant, named the Hare on the Hill, has since taken lobsters off the menu.
Meanwhile, a fisherman in Cornwall was able to catch one of the incredibly rare crustaceans in his lobster pot last year but threw it back after taking a couple of pictures as it was 'too small'.
Most lobsters are a brown colour, but when cooked they turn red which produces the iconic look most people would associate with a lobster.
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Even the rare blue lobsters would have been turned red in the pot, robbing the little crustaceans of their unique shell colour.
As for what makes these sea creatures turn blue on occasion, scientists have discovered that some lobsters have a genetic defect which causes them to produce too much of a protein which changes their shell colour.
It's lucky that some of the blue lobsters spotted in kitchens have been spared, as apparently they wouldn't taste any different to a regular lobster despite the remarkable shell colour.
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Even rarer than the blue lobster is one with an orange shell, which is said to be so rare that it's a one in 10 million kind of animal.
If by some incredible chance you ever manage to find one of these orange-shelled lobsters, you should either chuck it back in the sea or get in touch with someone who can take care of it.
Also, you might as well try asking it if it'll grant you three wishes, because if you've been lucky enough to find an orange lobster, you might be lucky enough for it to be magic, too!
Featured Image Credit: Alamy / Twitter/@LarsJohanL
