Rare orange lobster, found at Red Lobster, gets cool name and home at Denver aquarium

In 12 years of working at a Red Lobster in Pueblo, Colorado, Jose Romero has unloaded too many shipments of lobster to count.

The longtime dishwasher is always the man in charge of unpacking the lobsters, but in performing his regular duty on July 12, he came across something he — and most other people — had never seen before: an incredibly rare and vibrantly colored orange lobster.

“The first thought that went through his head was that he’s seen a blue lobster before, which was different, but he’s never seen an orange one,” Romero told the Pueblo Chieftain, part of the USA TODAY Network, through a translator. “When he saw it he just immediately was like … ‘Let me go get my leadership.’”

Kendra Kastendieck, the restaurant’s general manager, has only overseen the Pueblo seafood eatery for about a year but has worked in restaurants for about two decades. In all of her years, she said she’d never come across an orange lobster and her director, who’s worked for Red Lobster for 10 years, had never seen one either.

Pueblo is located about 44 miles south of Colorado Springs and 114 miles south of Denver.

“Everybody knows the blue lobsters because they make such headlines and they’re so brilliant in color, but those are only one in 2 million, the orange ones are one in 30 million. So we thought that was extra cool when it came into the restaurant,” Kastendieck said.

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What happened to the orange lobster?

The lobster was never for sale, Kastendieck said, and they turned instead to finding him a permanent home at a local Colorado zoo or aquarium.

Luckily, a new home was found pretty quickly, as representatives with the Downtown Aquarium in Denver confirmed to the Pueblo Chieftain Wednesday that the lobster was accepted and being transported to his new digs that day.

The Pueblo Red Lobster’s staff chose the a very appropriate name for an orange lobster found in Colorado — they’re calling him “Crush” as an homage to the legendary Denver Broncos “Orange Crush” defense of the late 1970s.

How rare are orange lobsters?

The orange lobster's color is the result of a genetic mutation, the Downtown Aquarium said, with the chance of one being one in about 30 million.

Still rare, although less so, are blue lobsters, which are believed to be found one in every two million, according to the New England Aquarium in Boston, Massachusetts.

American lobsters are mainly found in the northwest Atlantic Ocean and are most abundant in the coastal waters from Maine to New Jersey, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries.

They have a long lifespan, but it's difficult to determine a lobster's exact age because they shed their hard shell when they molt. Scientists believe that lobsters can live to be 100 years old.