A fisherman has described landing the rare crustacean in Belfast Lough as "the catch of a lifetime".
Stuart Brown from Bangor, Co Down, has said couldn't believe his eyes when he pulled one of his lobster pots aboard his boat last Friday.
The experienced skipper has been fishing since the age of 11, but says he has never come across anything like the vibrant blue creature. He also confirmed that as the lobster was just below the allowable size to keep, he released it back into the water after taking a few photos.
Stuart Brown took a few pictures of the lobster before returning it to the water. Image via RTÉ News
“We were sitting in about 50 to 60 feet of water and the fourth pot came up,” he recalled.
“I sort of saw it, but I think I thought, ‘it’s just a lobster’. You could hear the tail going.
“I slid the pot down to the crew man who lifted it out and he made a comment: ‘That’s very blue.’
“I looked at him and said: ‘Yeah, no problem.’ But then I did look at it again and said: ‘That’s too blue.’
“You would get lobsters out there that don’t look normal, they’d be a bit browner or redder, just something different with them, but nothing that extreme.
Brown says he looked the lobster up on Google, which is when he discovered the odds of catching one are two million to one.
The pot had been set up close to Blackhead Lighthouse on the northern shores of Belfast Lough,
RTÉ News reports.
Header image via Shutterstock
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