Stuart Brown, 28, told the Press Association: “We were sitting in about 50 to 60 feet of water and the fourth pot came up.

“I sort of saw it, but I think I thought, ‘it’s just a lobster’. You could hear the tail going.

“I slid the pot down to the crewman who lifted it out and he made a comment: ‘That’s very blue.’

“I looked at him and said: ‘Yeah, no problem.’ But then I did look at it again and said: ‘That’s too blue.’

“You would get lobsters out there that don’t look normal, they’d be a bit browner or redder, just something different with them, but nothing that extreme.

“I looked up Google to see how rare it was, and it was one in a two million chance of catching it.”

“I’ve never seen one – other fishermen I’ve spoken to who are a lot older than me, they said the same, that they haven’t seen any ever, so it’s a surprise to everybody it comes in on the east coast.

“It’s still out in the lough somewhere, swimming about as happy as can be. Hopefully, if someone else does catch it, they’ll return it as well.”