Sept. 25 (UPI) — An ultra-rare orange lobster that wound up in a tank at a New York store was returned to its ocean home by a Long Island-based rescue group.
Kyle Brancato said he was shopping at Tops on Jefferson Road in Henrietta when he spotted the orange lobster in the store’s tank.
“I think the only reason it was still in the tank was people probably thought it had a disease or something,” Brancato told WHAM-TV.
Brancato, believing he was looking at something special and unusual, purchased the lobster with the intent to save it from a dinner plate.
“I borrowed some tank water from Palmer’s down the road,” Brancato said. “That bought me enough time to go to Petco and pick up a 20-gallon tank, and I got 20 gallons of sea water that they sell in the store in boxes, and I emptied it into the tank, and cooled it down to the proper temperature.”
Brancato enlisted the help of animal rescue group Humane Long Island, which took custody of the crustacean and dubbed it “Jean-Clawd Van Dam.”
The lobster was released back into the Long Island Sound on Wednesday.
Orange coloration is believed to occur in only one out of every 30 million lobsters. An orange lobster named Peaches was brought to the University of New England in 2023 so researchers could study the cause of the unusual pigment.
Peaches laid a clutch of eggs that hatched in 2024, and researchers said some of the babies shared their mother’s coloration, indicating a genetic component to the orange color.