All white: Two albino lobsters caught in a week

The chances of catching an albino lobster is said to be one in a hundred million, but two lobstermen on the U.S. east coast have both managed to catch one of the rare crustaceans within a week. Bret Philbrick caught his speciman off Owls Head, Maine, on Thursday and Joe Bates caught one off a breakwater in Rockland days earlier. The pair are being kept in a crate at Owls Head Lobster Co. One will go to the Maine State Aquarium in Boothbay Harbor and the other to Brooks Trap Mill in Thomaston.

He’s got to be a survivor, I mean, because of his colour. The bottom of the ocean’s obviously dark, and I would think he really stuck out.

Joe Bates, lobsterman from Maine

The lobsters are under legal size and would normally have to be returned to the ocean but the Marine Patrol made an exception. Lobster colour is determined by a shell protein called Beta-Crustacyanin. The same protein, when exposed to high heat, denatures and turns red (in a pot of boiling water, for example). Bates also caught a one-in-30 million yellow lobster on Monday (pictured above, alongside his albino catch).

Americas albino lobsters