The one in two million blue lobster.Getty
Stuart Brown, a fisherman from Bangor, County Down, caught the same exceedingly rare blue lobster, twice in just a few months, in the same stretch of water just off the Belfast coast.
The chances of finding a blue lobster in the wild is about one in two million so the fact that Stuart Brown managed to catch the same one twice just six months apart in the same spot is incredible.
The blue coloration in lobsters is caused by a genetic mutation that affects the production of certain pigments. The odds of finding a blue lobster are a whopping 2,000,000 to one. What's even more amazing is that Brown, fishing from his boat the Huntress, caught the lobster in almost the exact same spot, close to Blackhead Lighthouse on the northern shores of Belfast Lough. Lobsters do not tend to stay in the same place.
Brown told RTE news "What was really unusual was that I caught it in almost exactly the same spot as the last time in February.
"I was shocked, a bit lost for words to be honest.
"I was really surprised that it was still in the area. We are more used to them moving off to a different part of the lough, but it has come back again.
"They usually pass through. Normally when they change their shell they move on.
"This one has changed its shell, but it is still as blue as the last time."
Just this February Brown nabbed the same lobster and released the fascinating creation back in the sea. While the blue lobster is not large enough to be legally landed, Brown marked the lobster's tail as a signal to other fishermen that the lobster must be returned to the sea.
Brown said "We can now mark it with a 'V' in its tail, which protects it and put it back again because it is so rare.
"That makes it illegal for anyone else to land it."
Brown has been fishing since he was 11 years old. He is now a shareholder in a County Down seafood wholesaling business, Seafresh, which sells crabs and lobsters throughout the United Kingdom and Europe.
Brown's not the only one in Ireland who's experienced this rare occurrence. In 2021, a Cork fisherman, Eamon O'Neill big blue lobster. He told Cork Beo at the time "I caught it there off Kinsale. Just south of the Old Head.
"You get a blue fella like that every couple of hundred lobsters or so, there's a different species that are the rare ones."
One in 2 million are quite the odds!