A rare lobster is on display at the MacDonald family’s lobster shop after it was caught off the coast of Alma, N.B. last week.

“It’s the first time I’ve seen a yellow lobster. They’re really cool,” says tourist Ron Johnson.

Fisherman Justin MacDonald caught the orange-yellow lobster on Thursday.

“It’s pretty uncommon to catch something like that,” says MacDonald. “Maybe once or twice a year I’ll see one or two of them.”

No one knows exactly why some lobsters look different than others. Scientists believe it could be a genetic defect or due to outside stimulus.

A few blue lobsters have been caught in the Maritimes in recent years. Scientists say the odds of catching a blue lobster are 1 in 5 million, but orange lobsters are twice as rare, at 1 in 10 million.

“Eventually we’ll probably cook it,” says store clerk Elizabeth MacDonald. “It’s what happens to all of them I guess.”

MacDonald says lobster traps can be like grab bags – you never know what you’re going to get.

“I get paid the same, whether it’s blue, green, yellow or orange, so it don’t really matter to me,” he says.

His grandfather, Reg Collins, has caught blue lobsters and seen a few orange ones in his 54 years of lobster fishing. He says he is keeping his eye out for even more.

“If there’s another colour, I want him,” says Collins. “If he’s pink, I’ll take him.”

With files from CTV Atlantic's Sarah Plowman