A rare white “ghost” lobster with roughly one-in-100-million odds has been donated to a Maine university so scientists can study its genetics and pigment, not serve it for dinner.
Researchers at the University of New England in Biddeford named the albino crustacean Casper and moved him into a campus lab after the Maine State Aquarium made the handoff. The New York Post reported the gift is meant to help scientists examine lobster genetics and pigment along the Eastern Seaboard.
UNE scientists put the odds of meeting a lobster like Casper in the wild at about one in a hundred million. That rarity is why he is in a research tank instead of a kitchen.
Dr. Markus Frederich, a professor of marine science who directs the school’s Invertebrate Physiology Lab, framed the animal as both spectacle and research tool.
Frederich said animals like him “are so rare and beautiful.”
"For us, they provide an amazing opportunity to ask fundamental biological questions,"
he added.
The white lobster did not arrive in a vacuum. The center’s work on rare-hued lobsters kicked off in 2024 when researchers received a batch of color variants that included orange, blue, yellow, purple, calico, and split-colored animals.
One of those earlier arrivals was an orange lobster named Peaches. Peaches produced typical reddish-brown babies, a concrete reminder that unusual shell color does not always pass cleanly to the next generation.
Casper’s see-through look has been tied to a lack of pigment-producing proteins, a point the coverage traced through Daily Mail material cited in the same reporting. Scientists are treating that as a genetics puzzle, not a menu feature.
The lab’s approach is non-invasive. Researchers take genetic samples from juvenile lobsters and analyze more than 15,000 genes tied to coloration. No lobsters are harmed for the work.
Frederich has called the project “especially rewarding” because large numbers of undergraduate students are involved in the sea-creature research. The lab is training students on real molecular questions while the public gets a clear answer to the dinner-plate joke: Casper is not headed to Red Lobster.
Maine State Aquarium gave up the animal so UNE could study how rare color traits are inherited and how pigment works at the molecular level. That is basic biology with a practical edge for anyone who follows the lobster fishery that anchors so much of coastal Maine’s identity.
The same news cycle also nodded to a separate June expedition off Brazil that reported 31 newly described sea creatures. That find is a different story in a different ocean. Casper’s file is simpler: a Maine aquarium donation, a Biddeford lab bench, and a white lobster whose odds make him a living research specimen.
Open questions remain. The public write-ups do not pin down the exact calendar date Casper was caught, donated, or walked into the lab, and they do not publish a full size-and-weight sheet. What they do establish is the donor, the campus, the research aim, and the one-in-100-million rarity claim from UNE scientists.
In a media climate crowded with noise, a translucent lobster in a Maine lab is a useful reminder that honest field science still starts with a real specimen, a clear question, and students willing to do the work.
