NH Man Snares Rare, Cobalt-Blue Lobster
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. – At first, New Hampshire lobsterman Bill Marconi thought he had caught a shiny blue beer can in his trap. It turns out it was a rare, cobalt-blue lobster. ... only one in 5 million lobsters are blue... Marconi donated his lobster to the Seacoast Science Center.
“Hello, this is Jan Percy, coming to you live from the Seacoast Science Center in Portsmouth, where our special guest today is the new, one-in-five million, blue lobster recently donated to the Center. We’ve dropped a special microphone in the tank and through the miracle of iMacs, we will be able to talk to our new little friend. Hello there little blue guy..... how are you today?”
“I feel like crap. I’m sliding off a plastic reef, there’s nothing to eat but the rotten chicken they feed us. It’s true we eat things that are dead, but very few chickens drown and make it to the bottom of the ocean, you know what I’m saying? A couple of fish heads would be nice.”
“But you’re the only blue lobster in the tank. There’s only a few of you in captivity. Surely you must feel some sense of pride, of being special?”
“Puhleez.....I’m not the only lobster in this display tank you know, and I’m only one and a half pounds. There’s a big guy whose eleven pounds, he gets to live because he’s huge, but he’s a real bastard. He walks over all of us, especially the new guys, and guess how hard it is for him to spot a blue lobster? You might as well put a flag on my antenna that says, “Crush Here”. And crabs, you put us in the same tank as crabs.”
“What’s the problem with crabs? You live together under the sea - don’t you?”
“Let me help you out here sister, crustaceans, like humans, have a basic stratification to their society. Putting crabs in to live side by side with lobsters is like putting crack addicts in with neurosurgeons, okay? They can’t even walk straight. They’re the first ones on the scene when anything big and dead shows up and we usually just hang back till they eat off all the raggedy stuff and then leave. Lobsters only scavenge the best of the rest and leave the little tidbits for the shrimp who at least have curved tails.”
“I wasn’t aware of any of that.”
“Of course not, why would the Discovery Channel cover that? And we wouldn’t talk to them anyway. They just look for new species of crustaceans. We run and hide from divers because we know, what they film today, they fillet tomorrow.”
“So, I guess you’d rather be back in the Atlantic?”
“Picking up on that are you? Of course I’d rather be home. I miss my family. I had a nice girl and she didn’t mind me being blue. It’s not easy being blue when everyone else is a normal mottled green. I went through a lot. I got a nice place together with this blue sponge and we helped each other. I hid next to him and brought him food. It was a good life, until......”
“But still, living in the display tank is better than....you know....”
“Being boiled alive, bored out and dipped in melted butter? Yes, you could say that.”
“Do blue lobster taste different than regular ones?”
”Sure, I answer that, and next week I’m on TV in Martha Stewart’s kitchen. Blue lobsters taste horrible I assure you. Matter of fact, I think the blue pigment makes us poisonous. One bite and a human covers himself with butter and goes mad. This interview is over, have a nice day girlfriend.”
“All right then. This is Jan Percy signing off. And now over to Jimmy Kim and what’s cookin’ in his Crab Shack today.”
