1-In-100 Million: Rare 'Cotton Candy' Lobster Caught Off Maine Coast

PORTLAND, ME — It was a 1-in-100 million catch for Maine lobsterman Bill Coppersmith, but for Haddie, the iridescent "cotton candy" lobster, it was a chance at a new life.

Haddie — who is now calling the Seacoast Science Center in Rye, New Hampshire, home — was caught by Coppersmith in Casco Bay this week, just off the coast of Portland, Maine. At first glance, he thought it was a toy.

“We were just hauling — as I’ve done for the last 40 years — and we just came across some lobsters in some traps … and there was a strange color in the trap,” Coppersmith told Boston.com.

Coppersmith named the lobster after his granddaughter. Since rare-colored lobsters have a hard time surviving in the wild due to their inability to hide from predators, Coppersmith took Haddie to Get Maine Lobster, the seafood distribution company where he works.

“I work with a couple hundred lobstermen,” Get Maine Lobster CEO Mark Murrell told Boston.com. “But I don’t know anybody directly who has ever caught a cotton.”

Despite the unlikely chance of actually catching a cotton candy lobster, this isn't the first a lobsterman has defied the odds by snagging a rare lobster.

In New England, a Boston seafood company caught a similarly rare albino lobster off the Maine coast in February. And in July, a Gloucester fisherman pulled an unusual blue lobster out of the ocean.

As for cotton candy lobsters, Robin Russell of Canada caught one in 2017. The lobster sported a shell of baby blue, pink, and periwinkle, according to National Geographic. Russell eventually opted to donate the lobster— nicknamed “Lucky”— to the Huntsman Marine Science Centre in Saint Andrews, New Brunswick.

So how do cotton candy lobsters obtain their pastel hues? It all has to do with a pigment called astaxanthin, Michael Tlusty, associate professor of sustainability and food solutions at the University of Massachusetts Boston, told National Geographic.

Lobsters get their color from astaxanthin, and the shape of this compound changes when other proteins bind to it. For example, when you cook lobster, the chemical bonds holding proteins to the pigment break, freeing astaxanthin throughout the lobster's shell and skin, which is what makes the animal appear bright red.

However, the pigment changes color depending on how it’s contorted. Binding to certain proteins can make astaxanthin appear blue, other proteins make it look yellow and any free-floating astaxanthin in the lobster looks red, according to National Geographic.

"There’s an amazing color of the shell. If you rotate her in the light it’s like a gem,” Murrell told Boston.com. "It’s like if you were looking at a beautiful gem. Her shell is like the inside of an oyster — it’s pearlish."

Get Maine Lobster kept Haddie in a tank while she waited for a new home. That happened when she was adopted by SeaCoast Science Center on Nov. 10.

“We are happy to have this unique lobster coming to Seacoast Science Center later this week,” the center wrote on Twitter. “The lobster will need to acclimate to our tank system so will not be on public display right away — look for her in the coming weeks!”