Claws to celebrate: Lobster with four pincers is spared the cooking pot

Meet Clawdette, one lobster who will never see the cooking pot, despite having twice as much claw meet as usual. For this crustacean is a freak of nature, with four fully formed claws - three on one arm and one on the other. She was acquired by a seafood wholesaler in Portland, Maine, but won’t be heading to a restaurant. Instead, Ready Seafood Co will donate her to the Department of Marine Resources with the suggestion it tries to breed from her.

There are all these traits that could have some weird genetic twist, and this is one that we rarely see

Adam Baukus, a marine researcher with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute

Some lobsters are found with an extra claw but they rarely function. Ready Seafood’s in-house marine biologist Curt Brown said he’d never seen a four-clawed lobster in more than a decade in the business. He noticed Clawdette was a high-grade lobster and so would usually have been sold to China, where there is a strong market. “We wouldn’t have thrown this in the pot,” he added. “If we hadn’t noticed this deformity, this lobster would be on a plane to Shanghai right now.”

Any one of those, you stick your finger in there, and she’ll take a piece of it with her. I’ve never seen that other claw actually work.

Marine biologist Curt Brown

clawdette