Silver Spring Seafood Owner Saves Rare Calico Lobster Named Eve

SILVER SPRING, MD — A race calico lobster's life was spared from a steam pot after it was rescued by a Montgomery County seafood distributor.

Ocean City Seafood of Silver Spring was sifting through a shipment from Maine last month when the owner came across the colorful crustacean, The Associated Press reported.

Typically, lobsters have dark bluish or greenish-brown shells. This one had a speckled black and orange shell.

The odds of finding a calico lobster, says the University of Maine's Lobster Institute, is about one in 30 million.

Instead of being someone's dinner, the female calico lobster was set aside.

"We knew she was special we didn't even know why," Rita Montoya, a spokeswoman for Ocean City Seafood, told The Baltimore Sun.

Montoya says the calico lobster, now named Eve, is in a special tank at Ocean City Seafood, the outlet reported. Eve will stay in Silver Spring until she is expected to move to an aquarium.

It is unclear where in America Eve will be relocated. However, several aquariums have expressed interest in her, according to multiple outlets.

A spokeswoman for the Georgia Aquarium said it is in the "very early planning stages of possibly caring for the lobster at the aquarium," AP reported.

In a statement, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, also known as PETA, said Eve shouldn't be put in an aquarium.

"This lobster's unique coloring shouldn't land her in an aquarium's tank any more than it should on someone's plate," PETA Director Danielle Katz said. "PETA has asked Ocean City Seafood to give this beauty her freedom and return her to the ocean, where she'll be able to pursue everything that's natural and important to her, and we're encouraging diners everywhere to live and let lobsters live by keeping them off their plates."

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