The crustacean crawled to safety.
An extremely rare orange lobster — one in 30 million — was rescued by an animal rights group after surviving for about two months in a tank at a Stop & Shop on Long Island, and released back into the ocean this week.
The creature, named Clementine, was caught in a net along with a school of other lobsters and shipped to a Hamptons supermarket in early July, but although it was treated as something of a store mascot, it faced an uncertain future.
But Clementine had a happy ending on Tuesday when she was rescued by Humane Long Island and released into the Long Island Sound.
“If they can't find a solution, they'll be thrown into the pot like the rest of the animals,” John Di Leonardo, an animal anthropologist and executive director of Humane Long Island, told The Washington Post in an interview on Wednesday.
“It's a testament to the strength of will of this lobster,” he added. “Its will to survive. Lobsters are like us, they want to live and be free.”
When the lobster first arrived at Stop & Shop, the seafood manager immediately knew it was something special: While most lobsters are brownish in color, this one was bright orange.
Di Leonardo said employees initially tried to get a reprieve by contacting a local aquarium to see if they could take the lobster, but were unsuccessful.
During its roughly two-month stay, the lobster was treated like a celebration, given shrimp unlike its peers and even given the nickname “Pinky” by the seafood manager's young daughter, Di Leonardo said.
“Upon discovering the lobster, our team at the Southampton store immediately began working to identify a local organization that could care for the lobster,” a Stop & Shop spokesperson said in a statement.
“Our team partnered with Humane Long Island to capture the lobsters, bring them to one of our stores, and then release them back into the wild,” the statement said.
Di Leonardo said he contacted Stop & Shop earlier this month.
“We had no intention of buying it and we've never encouraged people to buy it, so we asked (Stop & Shop) for a donation and they donated,” he explained. “We don't want to give them more money just to have them do the same thing to more animals.”
Di Leonardo said the lobster was an intelligent, sensitive creature that was taken into Humane Long Island's care and kept in cold ocean waters until staff released it back into the North Shore.
Staff stayed with Clementine for about an hour until they were sure she was safely settled in her new environment.
“Lobsters shouldn't be in pots or small tanks,” Di Leonardo said. “Lobsters are wild animals and they should live in the wild.”
