RIVERHEAD, NY — An animal advocacy group took the plunge recently to help a lobster.

According to John Di Leonardo, president of Humane Long Island, on Thursday night, the group got a call from a woman, Laura, in Westchester, who had been sent a live lobster as a dinner gift.

"As a vegan, she knew one thing immediately — this lobster wanted to live," Di Leonardo said.

Di Leonardo said he met Laura and her daughter Nola in New York City at an event, kept the lobster safe overnight, and then, on Friday morning, despite a frosty 29-degree temperature, released the lobster into the Long Island Sound in Riverhead.

Di Leonardo was instantly freezing: "Lobsters can’t go into shock. What they can do," he said, "is feel pain— as intensely as humans — which is why being dropped into boiling water causes immense suffering."

Nola has named the lobster Arlo, after her best friend, Di Leonardo said. "And today, Arlo is free. But Arlo isn’t special because he’s one lobster — he’s special because every animal wants to live."

Arlo is the ninth lobster release Humane Long Island has performed in the last three years, and the first of 2026, Di Leonardo said.

"While many of the lobsters Humane Long Island has rescued and released have been ultra rare 1-in-30-million orange lobsters, every lobster wants to live free in the ocean," he said.