Jordan lobster farms in Island Park, New York is where locals go to feast, and shellfish go to die.
But one lucky lobster is being spared this week, thanks to its incredible size.
The owner says he can’t bear to sell or cook the massive specimen, which is nearly a century old.
A crustacean so big employees are surprised by it and customers would rather take pictures with it than eat it.
“I’ve heard of these enormous lobsters but I’ve never seen one so it’s a real treat,” says Long Beach resident Brittney Beigel.
“That one you kind of have to use your whole body weight to lift it up so that’s crazy,” says employee Erika Opena.
Owner Stephen Jordan is no stranger to large lobsters.
Restaurant owners and diners routinely come to his wholesale and retail business for five, seven even 10 pound lobsters.
But this one officially weighs in at a whopping 23 pounds!
“We received it yesterday morning from one of our fisherman, John Price, who’s in the Bay of Fundy. And uh, he shipped it in, he didn’t even tell us, he told us to look in the crate we opened it up and it was like ‘whoa!'”
There’s no way to tell a lobster’s exact age but based on its weight and size fisherman say this one is roughly 95 years old.
Steve Jordan says it’s been about a decade since he’s found a lobster this big. So instead of selling it he’s going to donate it to the Long Island Aquarium.
“It’s almost like a dinosaur, you know. You don’t want to, you’d like to see it continue on and I think they would take good care of it.”
Restaurant customers can continue to have close encounters with this big guy until he heads to his new home at the aquarium in a few days.
Despite the lobster’s impressive size and age, experts say that lobsters at the deepest parts of the ocean often live to be a century old.
