How Much is a Blue Lobster Worth?

Only a handful of fishermen can ever say they have gone fishing one day and returned home with a gem like the blue lobster.

According to the New England Aquarium, coming in contact with a blue lobster is a unique experience, as the chances of ever seeing one in the wild are one in two million.

How Much is a Blue Lobster Worth?

A two-pound Blue lobster is valued at about $500 when offered on marketplaces like eBay and about $600 when offered on the menus of luxury restaurants. This high cost isn’t given by its taste, as it is said to taste the same as normal lobster, but from its rarity. 

Blue lobsters aren’t only suitable for consumption, but they are also priced very high in high-end restaurants and on eBay. Although listings on eBay pop up from time to time with price tags around $500 or so, they fail to attract a lot of bids.

How Rare Are Blue Lobsters?

Most lobsters that are usually caught on the Atlantic coast of North America have a more greeny-brown color, which isn’t very appealing. They only turn that orangey-pink color that we love once you boil them. So none of them are red lobsters to begin with.

But how rare is a blue lobster? What are the chances that you catch one for your next dinner? The blue color is due to a genetic defect that causes an abundance of a certain protein, according to the University of Maine Lobster Institute.

Although this is just a statistical guess based on available fishing data, the university states that for every two million normal lobsters, you will only find one blue one. It’s really hard to get real statistics for an animal so rare so nobody has real numbers, according to scientists. But what we know for sure is that its scarcity is what makes it expensive.

According to some experts and statisticians, blue lobsters aren’t as rare as you might think. Considering that over 200 million lobsters are caught every year in the North Atlantic, simple math tells us that around 100 of them will be blue lobsters if we take the one-to-two million ratio.

According to the UK National Lobster Hatchery, found in Cornwall, the iridescent blue found in North American species, as the blue lobsters found around Europe are duller in color, is even more common. So according to them, it isn’t farfetched to think that a bright blue color for a lobster has a chance of just one in a few hundred thousand.

The Rarest Lobsters

There are some other species of lobsters that are also pretty rare. One example is the popular yellow lobster, which is estimated as just one in 30 million according to estimates from the Lobster Institute, while the crystal lobsters or albino lobsters are estimated to be found just one in 100 million.

So although pretty rare, blue lobsters are far from the rarest types of lobster out there.

What have we learned so far?

• Blue lobsters are very rare, which is why, when found they will usually be donated to aquariums. Some of them do end up on the market either cooked or fresh, with prices between $500 and $600.
• The crystal or albino lobster, as well as the yellow lobster, are considered rarer than blue lobsters.

What Do Blue Lobsters Taste Like?

Experts state that there is no connection between the lobster’s color and its taste. In fact, when cooked, the blue lobster is very likely to not only taste the same as the regular lobster but also become just as red.

What Is Special About these rare crustaceans?

The fact that these crustaceans are very rare and beautiful makes them special. The New England Aquarium states that fishermen who are able to catch blue lobsters become famous due to how rare they are.

What Color Lobster Is the Rarest?

Blue lobsters are not the rarest, even though they are really hard to come by. According to experts, as it has a one in 100 million chance of being fished out of water, the white lobster is considered the rarest type.

Final Words

Even though you might be able to buy a blue lobster for $500 to $600, putting a dollar value on it is pretty hard. Most fishermen choose to throw them back in the sea when they catch them, but not before taking a picture for their ego.