Blue lobster 'catch of a lifetime' for Belfast fisherman - twice!

There's around a one in two million chance of catching a blue lobster and this fisherman has done it... twice!

Stuart Brown hauled in the rare coloured crustacean earlier this year in Belfast Lough and called it the catch of a lifetime.

He was in for a shock when it happened again in the same spot just a few months later.

The 28-year-old said lobsters don't usually stay in the same area so he was "lost for words" when he saw the blue hue again.

Because it's so rare, the lobster has now been marked with a V on its tail and released back into the wild.

The mark protects it and makes it illegal for anyone else to catch it and take it to shore.

Fisherman Stuart said: "I was really surprised that it was still in the area. We are more used to them moving off to a different part of the lough, but it has come back again.

"They usually pass through. Normally when they change their shell they move on.

"This one has changed its shell, but it is still as blue as the last time."

Lobsters are usually a mottled brown but they can also be white, blue, yellow and even two different colours - but these are much rarer to come across.

The normal colouring of a lobster helps them to blend into their environment to hide from predators.

A blue lobster is caused by a genetic mutation - that means there have been changes in the DNA which determines our characteristics.

Much like melanin is a pigment that determines the colour of a human's skin, astaxanthin determines the pigment of a lobster's shell.

The genetic mutation causes the lobster to produce too much of a pigment in their shells, giving it a bright blue hue.