A lobster so pale it is almost translucent has become the newest research subject at the University of New England, where scientists hope its extraordinarily rare coloring will help explain one of the ocean's smaller mysteries: why lobster shells come in so many colors.
The lobster, nicknamed Casper, arrived at UNE's Arthur P. Girard Marine Science Center in Biddeford, Maine, in early October, a donation from the Maine State Aquarium in Boothbay timed, fittingly, to the Halloween season. Ghost-white American lobsters like Casper are estimated to occur in roughly 1 in 100 million hatchings, making the animal one of the rarest color variants ever documented in the species.
Casper joins "Peaches," an orange lobster estimated at 1-in-30-million odds, who has lived in the program since researchers launched it in 2024. Led by Dr. Markus Frederich, a professor of marine sciences at UNE, the project is sequencing more than 15,000 genes to pin down the molecular switches that cause some American lobsters to develop shells in blue, orange, calico, white or the standard mottled brown-green most people picture. Researchers use only non-invasive sampling methods, so neither lobster is harmed by the testing.
Animals like Casper capture people's attention because they are so rare and beautiful. But, for us, they also provide an amazing opportunity to ask fundamental biological questions.
Dr. Markus Frederich, UNE marine sciences
The research already has a track record of answers worth having. Peaches has since produced offspring displaying a range of shell colors, giving Frederich's team a live look at how coloration is inherited across generations — data that is hard to come by, since most oddly colored lobsters caught by fishermen are rare, one-off finds rather than part of a breeding population held in a lab, as Good News Network reported.
Casper's extreme whiteness, caused by a near-total absence of pigment, represents the opposite end of the color spectrum from Peaches and gives researchers their first chance to study that variant up close. The center says it will monitor Casper's health and development while adding new genetic data to the project, which has drawn attention from aquariums and biology programs well beyond Maine.
For now, Casper is settling into life in a research tank a long way from the ocean floor — proof, Frederich's team says, that even the rarest-looking animals can still teach scientists something ordinary lobsters cannot.