When a Co Down fisherman hauled in a rare blue lobster earlier this year in Belfast Lough, he described it as the catch of a lifetime.
So, when Stuart Brown landed the remarkable crustacean for a second time in the same spot several months later, he was left lost for words.
Some marine biologists have estimated the odds of catching a blue lobster at about 2,000,000 to one.
Mr Brown, 28, from Bangor, said he believed the second catch was even more unlikely because lobsters do not usually remain in the same area.
He had been fishing in the waters close to Blackhead Lighthouse on the northern shores of Belfast Lough when he landed the same lobster on his boat, the Huntress, this week.
He said: “What was really unusual was that I caught it in almost exactly the same spot as the last time in February.
“I was shocked, a bit lost for words to be honest.
“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.”
Mr Brown said the lobster was now large enough to be legally caught, but he intends to return it to the water because it is so rare.
He said: “We can now mark it with a V in its tail, which protects it and put it back again because it is so rare.
“That makes it illegal for anyone else to land it.”
The cause of the blue hue is a rare genetic defect which means some lobsters create too much of a pigment in their shells.
Mr Brown, who has been fishing since the age of 11, is a shareholder in Co Down seafood wholesaling business Seafresh, which sells crabs and lobsters throughout the UK and continental Europe.
