Experts say the odds of catching a two-tone lobster are about 1 in 50 million. Yet a fisherman off Maine recently hauled in a lobster that was half orange and half brown (pictured above).

“It looked as if someone had taken painter’s tape and run it from proboscis to tail, then spray-painted one side. It’s a perfectly straight line,” Alan Lishness, of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, told Reuters. “You don’t usually see such hard edges in nature.”

If this isn’t bizarre enough, a fisherman off Massachusetts on Thursday hauled up a blue lobster (pictured below). The odds of that happening are 1 in 2 million.

Imagine the odds of both of these lobster being caught during the same week or so.

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Ben Hogan poses with blue lobster caught off Cape Cod. Image is a video screen grab

Typically, American lobsters are brownish-green. The peculiar coloration is caused by a genetic defect that causes the lobster to produce an excessive amount of a particular protein.

“They’re still lobsters, but they stand out because they’re different,” states the University of Maine’s Lobster Institute, on its website.

The two-toned lobster was caught by Jeff Edwards of Owl’s Head, Maine. After the lobster was photographed, it was delivered to Ship to Shore Lobster Co, a local fisherman’s wharf.

“We’ve had blue ones and calico ones, but we’d never seen anything like this,” said Anna Mason, co-owner of Ship to Shore.

Ultimately, the two-toned lobster was donated it to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, which keeps the crustaceans in a tank for children’s education programs.

“This one just stops people in their tracks,” Lishness said. “Even people who’ve seen thousands of lobsters just can’t believe it.”

The blue lobster was caught off Cape Cod by Ben Hogan, who noticed the pale-blue specimen wriggling in a trap he hauled up Thursday afternoon (video posted below).



“It was our last trap of the day, in about 85 feet of water, and we found this,” Hogan says in the video. “I’ve definitely have never seen anything like it, until today.”

Hogan had gone out with his grandfather, Victor Caruso, and caught the lobster on the last haul of the day.

They teamed with CapeCast to produce the video in which the two displayed the lobster and talked about what they were going to do with it.

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“I think it’s his day to bask in glory,” Caruso says of his grandson.

Most likely, the lobster will find a home in a nearby aquarium.

“We’re definitely going to donate it somewhere where it can be seen, because it’s definitely a rarity that I’ve never seen,” Hogan says. “I’m sure a lot of people would enjoy seeing this, so I want to put it somewhere where many people will get to see it.”

Which means that the blue lobster, like the two-toned specimen, will be spared the boiler pot.