A huge lobster was caught off of the coast of Maine. The lobster, who was named Rocky, weighed in at 27 pounds!! Rocky was caught by a shrimper and given to the Marine State Aquarium instead of ending up on someone’s dinner table. Read more after the jump.
Fortunately for Rocky, the 27-pound record-breaking lobster, justice has been served – not somebody’s dinner.
Instead of ending up in a pot of boiling water, the possibly largest lobster ever caught in Maine will be released back to the sea.
The massive crustacean had the misfortune of landing in the net of a shrimp fisherman last week. Rocky was in fact so big that he jammed special grates that allow fish and lobsters to escape shrimp nets, Reuters reported.
While a typical dinner-time lobster weighs between 1 and 2 pounds, this lobster stunned observers with its nearly 40-inch-long frame.
Robert Malone, the shrimper who caught the lobster during his final trawl of the season, donated him to the Marine State Aquarium, where he was christened Rocky after the city of Rockland, near where he was caught.
The aquarium decided to release him, thanks in part to his startling size and the fact that larger lobsters produce more eggs with higher survival rates. One thing we don’t know about Rocky is his age.
“A lobster that big is pretty rare and pretty special. So instead of keeping it in captivity, we think it’s best to release it back in the wild,” said Amy Hayden Roderigues, aquarium director, according to WMTW-TV.
Big though he may be, Rocky is a hefty 17 pounds short of being the largest lobster ever discovered. That lobster, caught in 1977 off Nova Scotia, weighed a whopping 44 pounds and 6 ounces.
