Lobster found with Pepsi logo tattoo fueling ocean litter concerns

Concerns over debris littering the world's oceans once again came to the fore after a Canadian fishing crew found a lobster with the blue and red Pepsi logo imprinted on its claw.

The lobster trapped in waters off Grand Manan, New Brunswick, had been loaded on to a crate to have its claws banded when Karissa Lindstrand came across it.

Lindstrand, who drinks around 12 cans of Pepsi was quick to spot the resemblance.

''I was like, 'Oh, that's a Pepsi can,' '' she said. On closer scrutiny, it seemed more like a tattoo on the claw. ''It looked like it was a print put right on the lobster claw.''

Over a week after the find, debate continues to rage how it might have come to be: some say the lobster might have grown around a can that ended up at the bottom of the ocean, while others speculate that part of a Pepsi box somehow had become stuck on the lobster.

Lindstrand is not impressed with the explanations. She points out that the image on the claw was pixelated, suggesting it could not have come from a can, while the image on a Pepsi box is far too large to be what she saw on the claw.

She told Canada's The Globe and Mail: "It looked like the image was tattooed on the lobster claw. I've just seen deformed claws. I've never seen anything like this before with the image of a Pepsi symbol."

According to commentators, the find highlights the growing problem of plastic pollution, with the latest figures suggesting between 5 and 13 million tonnes ending up in our oceans every year.

The discovery comes as Iceland and the Co-op supermarkets announced their support to a UK-wide bottle deposit return scheme to help tackle ocean plastic pollution.