The unique yellow burbot was found during monitoring for invasive species in Lake Ontario. Image:Jacqueline Stephens / USFWS

We’ll call him mellow yellow. An “exceptionally rare” yellow-colored burbot ( Lota lota ) was recently caught by a team of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) biologists in Oswego Harbor on Lake Ontario in Upstate New York.

Fish Biologist Jake Cochran displays the uniquely colored burbot collected in Owego Harbor, NY. Image: Brian Weidel/USGS

Burbots are long fish that weigh about three to five pounds on average, and live in cold rivers and lakes of North America, Europe, and Asia. To the naked eye, they appear scaleless, but are actually covered with tiny, almost microscopic scales . What they eat depends on their size. Smaller burbots will eat zooplankton, while bigger burbots prefer to snack on other fish.

The team caught the brightly colored fish during a routine aquatic invasive species survey. It gets its unique color from a rare genetic condition called xanthochromism .…