Restaurant Employees Rescued Rare Orange Lobster From Being Cooked After Recognizing Its Unusual Color

Employees at a Red Lobster restaurant in Hollywood, Florida saved an incredibly rare orange lobster from the jaws of death after noticing its unusual color and called experts for it to be rescued.

The news release from Red Lobster says that the rare sea creature arrived in a shipment to the restaurant. Fortunately, they were able to save the lobster, or else it would have seen an alternative universe if it was cooked on a plate. But how rare is an orange lobster that it needs to be rescued? Read on to find out the answer.

(Photo : TREVOR COLLENS/AFP via Getty Images)
This photo taken on December 10, 2020 shows fisherman Michael Vinci holding live western rock lobsters to be purchased directly from the boat by customers lined up on the wharf at the Fishing Boat Harbour that features a bronze statue of a lobster fisherman in Fremantle in Western Australia.

Orange Lobster Rescued and Found a New Home

Red Lobster employees are used to seeing crustaceans, but one staff noticed a rare lobster that immediately caught the attention of the management. The bright orange lobster was sent to them via a shipment and so they started a mission to rescue it by calling experts from Ripley's Aquarium.

The news release said that staff at the restaurant named the orange lobster Cheddar as a nod to Red Lobster's iconic Cheddar Bay Biscuits. Mario Roque, a manager at the restaurant who led the rescue, described finding Cheddar as a miracle and was thankful for the people who helped in finding the orange lobster a good home.

Ripley's Aquarium told CBS News that they sent two team members to Red Lobster to pick up Cheddar and drove her to their research center where the lobster currently stays. She acclimates for a while at their quarantine facility.

Ripley's said that the vibrant orange color of Cheddar is due to a genetic mutation that causes the sea creature to produce more of a certain protein that causes its color. Lobsters can also come in different colors, such as blue which affects one in 2 million.

The restaurant is proud of its employee and grateful that the team recognized how rare and special the orange lobster is. In an email to CNN, the aquarium said that it is honored to provide Cheddar its forever home.

The Red Lobster restaurant is on the front line of rescuing unique lobsters, not just in Florida but also in their other branches. Last year, a restaurant in Virginia rescued a calico lobster, which is also a rare kind.

ALSO READ: Jersey Fisherman Caught Rare Blue Lobster And Returned It to The Sea to Conserve Uniquely Colored Crustacean

Orange Lobster May Not Be As Rare As Previously Thought

In 2018, an orange lobster was discovered at Roche Bros. supermarket in Westboro, Massachusetts, CBS News reported. Fast forward to July 11, 2022, another orange lobster was found at Market 32 grocery store in New York that is rehomed to Via Aquarium in Rotterdam. Then a day after that, Red Lobster employees rescued Cheddar, who is now in Ripley's Aquarium.

Although orange lobsters may be rare, New England Aquarium senior aquarist Bill Murphy said that there has been a shift in the reported rarities of orange lobsters. According to a report from Yahoo! News, from being one in 30 million they have downgraded to one in 10 million lobsters.

Meanwhile, other colored lobsters remained the same. Blue lobsters still occur in one every 2 million, calico lobsters are still one in 30 million, and the half and half colored is still one in 50 million. Also, the white lobster remains to be the rarest of them all as they are born in one in 100 million lobsters.