Just a week from now, thousands of people will trek to Rockland, Maine for a festival devoted entirely to the eating of a creature once thought only worthy of “poverty food” and fertilizer. The lobster festival approacheth. In honor of the occasion, a reminder of all that makes the lobster beautiful: that attractive red color it turns when ready to be devoured.
Though natural color variations due to diet and genetics do occur, the shelled seafood you crack open at Red Lobster probably didn’t start off that deep orange-red color we’ve come to associate with crustacean snacks. Live American lobsters usually look kind of muddy brown, even though their shells contain astaxanthin, a carotenoid from the same family of organic pigments that includes beta-carotene, the source of carrots’ bright hue. Astaxanthin is also responsible for the pink coloring of flamingos, salmon, krill, shrimp and crabs.
Free astaxanthin appears red, but when it binds to proteins in the lobster’s shell, the bonds twist the pigment, changing its color. Depending on the type of protein it bonds to, there’s either what’s called a bathochromic shift, which turns the pigment blue, or a hyspochromic shift, to yellow. When you’re looking at a lobster, you’re seeing light reflecting through different layers of free and bonded astaxanthin–a lot of colors mixed together, hence the muddy brown.
Source: Popsci.com
