Frozen Lobsters Can Come Back to Life When Thawed
In one of the strangest seafood experiments ever conducted, a Connecticut company called Trufresh managed to freeze lobsters solid and bring them back to life when thawed. Yes, you read that right: zombie lobsters.
The process worked like something out of a cryogenics lab. First, they slowed the lobster's metabolism by placing it in below-freezing seawater. Then they flash-froze it in minus-40-degree brine, freezing the creature so quickly that ice crystals couldn't form and damage its muscle tissue cells. Finally, they thawed the frozen lobster in 28-degree seawater and waited.
Out of roughly 200 lobsters, about 12 came back to life. That's a 6% success rate, which sounds underwhelming until you remember we're talking about resurrecting the dead.
The Skeptics Weigh In
Robert Bayer of the University of Maine's Lobster Institute was intrigued but dubious. He pointed out that similar flash-freezing methods had existed for years in the seafood industry, yet nobody had ever reported undead lobsters before. The company itself admitted the testing was limited and results were inconsistent—in another trial, only 2 out of 30 lobsters survived the freeze-thaw cycle.
The lack of scientific rigor meant this was more of a weird discovery than a breakthrough. No peer-reviewed studies followed. No other companies replicated the results. The zombie lobster phenomenon remained a bizarre footnote in seafood history.
Why Don't We Do This?
Even if it worked more reliably, freezing live lobsters is a terrible idea for your dinner plate. The process causes enzymes to leach into the meat during thawing, creating a mushy, unappetizing texture. There's also the risk of toxins developing during the freeze-thaw process.
Commercial lobster operations freeze lobster after cooking for good reason—quality and safety. Flash-freezing might preserve cells well enough for occasional revival, but it doesn't preserve flavor or texture worth eating.
The Mystery Remains
What exactly happened in those rare successful revivals? The lobsters likely entered a state of extreme metabolic suspension rather than true death. The flash-freezing was so rapid that some lobsters avoided lethal cellular damage, entering a kind of suspended animation.
Think of it less as resurrection and more as an incredibly deep coma. The lobsters that "came back" probably never fully died in the first place—they just got very, very close.
Still, the image of a frozen lobster twitching back to life in a bucket of cold seawater remains one of the strangest things anyone has done to a crustacean. And that's saying something, considering we boil them alive.