Check Out This ‘Monster’ 14-Pound Lobster Caught After Hurricane Nicole

By the time the bright red exoskeleton and buttery cooked flesh of a lobster is sitting on a plate or in a potato roll, it looks utterly appetizing, and is begging to be dipped in butter. But it's easy to forget that lobsters are arthropods, the family of animals—including spiders and scorpions—whose skeletons are on the outside and who generally look like aliens.

And once in a while, Mother Nature wields her immense power and reminds us that many of our favorite foods are just that; alien-looking "sea monsters." Case in point: this downright scary-looking, 14-pound lobster that was fished from the shores of Hamilton, Bermuda in the wake of Hurricane Nicole.

The huge crustacean was brought in by fisherman Tristan Loescher of Sanctuary Marine Bermuda, who was quick to remark on the sea beast's scary appearance, commenting "14lb! Big bug! Kinda wish I caught it a day later, in the lobster tournament."

Sanctuary Marine Bermuda even posted a GoPro video of the lobster being reeled in by Loescher to the tune of very chill reggae music.

"As an a avid lobster diver and fisherman, I was shocked to see and catch a lobster of this size," Loescher told MUNCHIES. "Especially in this way- caught accidentally on hook and line, as we normally noose lobsters in Bermuda. Based on its size, this lobster could be more than 40-years-old. I knew he had to go free!"

Sure, a 14-pounder could have brought in a pretty penny at the fish market, but it was promptly returned to the sea after a quick photo-op, presumably to not further upset the sea gods who had just torn up swaths of the Caribbean and East Coast of the US.

And while Loescher's catch is no doubt impressive, it's far from being the biggest lobster ever wrestled from the sea. Last summer, the crew of the Big Dipper caught a 3-foot-long, 20-pound lobster off the shores of Maine; those fishermen also referred to their catch as a "monster." And three years before that, a 27-pounder named "Rocky," with claws big enough to "break a man's arm" was also found in the waters near Maine and also returned to the sea to avoid an arm-breaking crustacean attack on land.

But according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the biggest lobster ever caught was a 100-year-old, 44-pound, three-and-a-half foot long leviathan from Nova Scotia. And back in the Pliocene period, over a million years ago, lobsters could easily get up to six feet long.

Imagine finding one of those lurking in the waters beneath? But then again, imagine how many lobster rolls you could make.