Hampton Beach Oceanarium hosts Lucky, a one-in-30-million ‘feisty’ orange lobster

HAMPTON — Explore the Ocean World Oceanarium has a new tenant, an extremely rare orange lobster just added to its tank.

Explore the Ocean World owner Ellen Goethel said she picked up the unique crustacean from Union Oyster House in Boston on June 2 after its chef, Rico DiFronzo, gave her a call offering her the sea creature for her exhibit. This orange lobster joins two other rare beauties at the Oceanarium this season — a blue and a calico — all weighing between one and one and a quarter pounds.

Explore the Ocean World Oceanarium owner Ellen Goethel holds up an orange lobster with Oyster House Restaurant Chef Rico DiFronzo. Photo by Ellen Goethel

“This orange lobster is just gorgeous, but he’s very feisty,” Goethel said.

The phenomenon that gives lobsters their color is the proteins in their shells, Goethel said. Lobsters are born with an assortment of orange and blue proteins, which blend to give the vast majority of lobster shells the familiar brown hue, although all turn red when cooked.

Occasionally, Goethel said some of the color proteins are missing, resulting in shell colors ranging from red, yellow, orange and blue, to specimens with multi-color shells — like a calico — or with no color at all, like white or albino lobsters.

“If lobsters hatch without the blue protein, it will have an orange shell,” Goethel said. “If it hatches without an orange protein, that’s when you have a blue lobster.”

The blue lobster on exhibit this year has a white underside, she said, and was donated to the Oceanarium by Mortillaro’s Lobster Co. of Gloucester, Massachusetts. The very rare calico — which is basically black with orange spots — was donated by Yankee Fishermen’s Cooperative in Seabrook, she said.

Union Oyster House picks Hampton Beach to rehome rare lobster

All the sea creatures on display over the summer in the Oceanarium’s observation tanks will be returned to their natural habitat when it closes at season’s end, she said.

“Everything in my tanks goes back into the Gulf of Maine in the fall,” Goethel said.

Dan, of Oyster Union House, poses for a photo with the orange lobster. Dan is champion oyster shucker at the international Seafood Show in Boston for 2025. Photo by Ellen Goethel

That’s one of the reasons DiFronzo called her, and it isn’t the first time he reached out to Goethel. The first time was 2023, she said, when DiFronzo found himself with two orange lobsters, which he named Mac and Cheese.

Looking online for a place to house them safely until they could be returned to the sea, DiFronzo came upon Goethel’s Oceanarium website. She cared for and exhibited Mac and Cheese that summer, she said, then returned them to the ocean in October 2023.

“He said he called me again because he wanted to place this orange lobster with someone who’d take care of it and return it to the sea,” she said.

For Goethel and her commercial fisherman husband, David, the Union Oyster House has another special meaning.

“I met my husband David while we both were working at the New England Aquarium,” she said. “We had our first date at the Union Oyster House. It’s the oldest oyster house in the country.”

Orange lobster is a one-in-30-million catch

How rare are these rare varieties of the lobster species? According to the website aquariumwhisperer.com, blue lobsters are one in two million in occurrence, while the chance of finding an orange or calico lobster is one in 30 million. The rarest of all — the albino or cotton candy (pale blue) variety has one in 100 million odds.

As for the newest rare inhabitant at the Oceanarium, Goethel told DiFronzo, she usually doesn’t name her exhibits. But he gave her his suggestion anyway.

“He called it Lucky,” Goethel said and laughed. “Lucky because it didn’t end up in the pot.”

Explore the Ocean World Oceanarium owner Ellen Goethel holds up an orange lobster donated by the Oyster House Restaurant. Photo by Ellen Goethel

Explore the Ocean World Oceanarium is a small, hands-on educational facility offering guided tours and touch tanks for people of all ages. It’s located at 367 Ocean Boulevard and open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays through June and daily throughout the summer, except for Wednesdays, when it is closed.

For more information, visit www.exploretheoceanworld.com, or call 603-758-7998.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Hampton Beach Oceanarium hosts Lucky, a one-in-30-million ‘feisty’ orange lobster

Reporting by Angeljean Chiaramida / Portsmouth Herald

USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

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