Catch me if you can: Maine State Aquarium Director Aimee Hayden-Rodriques holds the 27-pound, 40-inch lobster 'Rocky'A colossal, 27lb lobster has been caught off the Maine coast - but thanks to a kind-hearted fisherman, it won't be heading for the pot.
Robert Malone, from Cushing, caught the crustacean in his shrimp nets last Friday. He turned the lobster - the size of an average three-year-old - over to the aquarium at Boothbay Harbor.
The lobster, dubbed Rocky after it was found in the Rockland coastal area, is 40 inches long and weighs in at 27lb - four pounds heavier that the aquarium's largest specimen.
Elaine Jones, from the Department of Marine Resources, said: 'All the weight is in the claws. It would break your arm.'
However Rocky has some way to go before squaring up to the biggest lobster in the Guinness Book of Records - a giant caught in waters off Nova Scotia who weighed 44lb.
Lobsters that make it to the dinner table are usually between one and two pounds.
Maine restricts fishermen from keeping lobsters that measure more than 5 inches from the eye to the top of the tail.
Fisherman in the state hauled in a record 100 million pounds of lobster last year, due in part to overfishing of predators such as haddock, cod and monkfish.
Rocky was returned to his home in the Atlantic ocean today.
source: dailymail
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