Lobsters Can Eat Squid Until Blue in the Face

Its Latin name is Homarus americanus , but most people know it as the American lobster--red, tasty and found along the Atlantic coast from Labrador to North Carolina.

Although fishermen have occasionally found lobsters measuring over 2 feet and weighing more than 30 pounds, the average adult lobster in a catch is 9 inches in length and weighs little more than a pound.

Lobsters live in rock shelters in relatively shallow water where they eat fish, dead and alive, along with small mollusks and, sometimes, seaweed. Lobster fishermen usually use oily, salted fish as bait to lure lobsters into rectangular traps of wooden slats through rope funnels that prohibit them from escaping.

They catch an estimated 30 million pounds of the creatures each year, according to recent government figures. In the past decades, the fishing industry has hatched millions of baby lobsters in fisheries, then dumped them into the waters off Cape Cod when they are old enough to crawl and fend for themselves.

Within five or six years, the tiny lobsters have grown into adulthood and can be legally caught and eaten. Lobsters are relatively rich in protein and have 62% of the nutritional value of beef.

Spiny lobsters, such as rock lobsters, crawfish and langosta, are smaller members of the same family, which is found throughout the world. The European lobster, Homarus gammarus , is smaller than American lobsters and dark green in color.

American lobsters can range in shades of color from pale orange to almost black, and some have mottled shells that resemble calico.

Blue lobsters are a genetic variation and extremely rare in nature, but a red lobster can become blue, and even purple, if fed a steady diet of squid, according to scientists who have dozens of squid-stuffed blue lobsters in their laboratories.

Even rarer are lobsters with two massive crusher claws instead of one crusher claw and one slender seizer claw. Scientists estimate that fewer than 0.04% of lobsters develop only crushers.