Bruce the rare orange lobster was saved from the pot by Save The Bay
NEWPORT, R.I. – July 15, 2024 – Bruce the orange lobster was saved from the pot and the plate by the staff and customers at the Old Grist Mill Tavern in Seekonk. The rare crustacean had a few close calls, but he’s now swimming safely along with the dogfish sharks, sea horses, skates and other sea life at Save The Bay’s Hamilton Family Aquarium in Newport.
“It wasn’t in our wheelhouse where we could keep him as a pet,” said Karl Pelletier, owner of the Old Grist Mill Tavern.
The Old Grist Mill, which has a big fake red lobster on its roof, is in the middle of its annual Lobster Fest. Bruce arrived with dozens of other lobsters a couple of weeks ago and stood out as soon as he was dropped into the restaurant’s lobster tank.
“The second he hit the water, he was glowing,” Pelletier said.
According to most studies, orange color morphs of the American lobster are about 1 in 30 million, says Adam Kovarsky, aquarium curator. He says, “Colormorphs are a result of a rare genetic mutation in the lobster’s pigmentation.”
“A ‘normal’ non-mutated American lobster has pigments that make up its standard mottled-brown coloration,” Kovarsky says. “These pigments include red, orange, yellow, blue colorations and even a pure white, which is an absence of coloration.”
“When an orange colormorph occurs, it can only show the orange colors in its pigmentation,” he says. “This mutation is genetic; they are born this way and will remain this way their entire life.
Customers told Pelletier he had a rare guest, one that was too important to stuff and serve. Pelletier put the lobster on the “do-not-cook” list. The staff gave him a name and treated Bruce like a pet.
After a close call with a boiling pot, it was clear Bruce needed a new home
Still, a lobster’s life is tenuous when it lives in a tank in the middle of a restaurant dining room. One day Bruce was plucked from the tank and about to be tossed into a pot with much hotter water when dining-room staff members ran into the kitchen and saved his life. The cook was relieved, Pelletier said, not wanting to be branded “a murderer” by his co-workers.
Shaken by the close call, Pelletier decided he had to find a new home for Bruce. He put the word out on social media, and Save The Bay answered the call.
“The lobster will be on display to the public in our Deeper Waters exhibit,” Save The Bay said in an Instagram post. “In accordance with our mission, this lobster will be released back into Narragansett Bay unless there is an issue that would prevent its survival in the wild…Click here to read the full article.