At West Harpswell Elementary School, Ms. Giberson’s 4th and 5th grade students are getting a first hand experience with a rare Lobster. Below is Ms. Giberson’s story:

I have some exciting news that I thought you might be interested in. I think that my class has an albino lobster in our salt water tank this year. It came to us grayish-white in color with black eyes. I thought all albino animals had pink or red eyes so I have been looking up albinos on the internet. I found a site in Cape Cod about a fish market that was given an albino and I seem to be having the same experience as this fish market.

The lobster started to turn from grayish to dull light blue the longer it was in my tank. The article about the lobster in Cape Cod stated that if cooked the albino would not turn red but be white. Since I am not going to cook this lobster, I think I have another way to find out. In the past, when I had a lobster molt, I took the shell out of the tank to coat it with shellac to preserve it. What I found was that a shell out in the air will turn red in about three days, like it was cooked. If the albino lobster molts this year I’ll take part of the shell out of the water to see if the shell stays white or turns red. If it stays white, I’ll be convinced that it is an albino.

I also read that an albino lobster is very aggressive. Below you can see a video of the albino lobster attacking another lobster in the tank. While cleaning the tank, the albino lobster has attacked me and shoved the spike on top of his head into my thumb making it bleed. I’ve never had a lobster do that before. Usually they’ll just swim backwards away quickly. I do have to admit that I am not always paying attention to the animals when I am cleaning the tank with my class. This tank is taken care of by the students and I’m just there to supervise. So while I’m showing them what to do, I am frequently surprised by a nearby animal.

Ms. Giberson’s class will keep us up to date with their investigation about their albino lobster.