A 15-pound, possibly 100-year-old lobster is being relocated from a South Florida restaurant to spend his golden years at the Maine State Aquarium.
As Fark points out, this is the opposite of the migration pattern you might typically associate with retirees.
The Miami Herald reports on this lobster’s tale (sorry) (it’s Friday):
This story started when Tin Fish chain founder and owner Joe Melluso’s seafood supplier mentioned he had a 15-pound lobster. Melluso once caught a 26-pounder during his teenage years on a Long Island lobster boat, but remained skeptical about a 15-pounder until he saw it.
“You can pull in hundreds of thousands of pounds (of lobster) and never see a lobster this size,” Melluso said.
Melluso figured this massive crustacean’s fate would be dinner, but first he did a little math to estimate the lobster’s age and concluded the critter could be more than 100 years old. That made the local news, and the story attracted the attention of a group who wanted to find this centenarian of the seas a gentler ending. A little research uncovered they could relocate the lobster—now named Larry, for the SpongeBob SquarePants character—to Maine for $300, via FedEx.
Said one of Larry’s rescuers, “If you’re going to live 110 years, you deserve to live and not be someone’s dinner.”