PICTOU, Nova Scotia (AP) – Delilah is one cranky lobster.

She’s pregnant, hungry and in a strange place: a tank at the lobster hatchery in Pictou.

She’s blue, too. Not depressed blue, but really blue.

Delilah is one of an estimated 2 million blue lobsters in the world. That makes her rare but she’s even more of a treasure because she has berries, or eggs, attached to her underside.

Finding a berried female blue lobster is extremely unusual, said hatchery manager Jennifer Feehan. Having released her eggs in captivity is an even rarer event, she said.

“We think it’s the first time this has been done,” Feehan said.

Delilah is one of the latest berried female lobsters captured by specially licensed members of the Northumberland Fishermen’s Association and taken to the nonprofit hatchery as part of a project to improve area lobster stocks.

The eggs hatch into minuscule lobsters, which are nursed in tanks for two weeks until they reach the quarter-sized Stage 4. In the wild, only a small percentage of lobsters survive to Stage 4.

Then they are returned to the sea, in hopes they will grow to dinner-table size, a process taking five to eight years.

That means it will take a while for local fishermen to benefit from the Pictou project, now in its second year, Feehan said.

Hatchery staff are also waiting to see if Delilah’s offspring will be blue like their mother.

Once their eggs are released, the female lobsters are released back into the wild.

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