Pet 'lobster' dies after activist steals it from restaurant tank and throws it into sea
A restaurant owner has said his pet crayfish is likely to have died the instant it was thrown into the sea by an activist who stole it.
Sean Cooper owns the Catch at the Old Fish Market in Weymouth, which had a tank containing two crayfish gifted to him by a fisherman who he'd named Ronnie and Reggie.
Keeping them in a tank in the restaurant not in preparation for eating but as pets and to be an interesting and educational point of fascination for visitors to the place, both of them have now died.
At around 9pm on 10 April, 2025, activist Emma Smart barged into the Catch at the Old Fish Market and declared she was 'taking the lobster' as it 'needed to be free'.
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A member of staff attempted to stop her as she grabbed one of the crayfish from the tank and fled the restaurant, and The Independent reports she then threw the animal into the harbour 'like a cricket ball'.
Whatever intention she had of liberating the lobster, which was actually a crayfish, most likely had the opposite effect as restaurant owner Cooper said the crayfish being stolen from a tank of warm water and hurled into the cold sea 'almost certainly' killed it instantly.
The second crayfish died not long afterwards, which Cooper suggested might have been due to the loss of its mate.
He told BBC Radio Solent's Dorset Breakfast show he'd had the animals as pets for a 'couple of years', but the difference in water temperature the activist threw it into meant it likely 'died the second it hit the harbour water'.
He said: "Crayfish are unusual in these waters. The local fishermen had caught them, we had taken them into the tank and when parents come into the fish shop with their children, they get to see unusual fish and shellfish.
"We've even got a video of one off them shedding its skin at midnight one night, which was amazing, and so we're able to show that to children and educate them about how crayfish and lobsters grow and develop over the years."
Cooper said he'd wanted 'the book thrown' at Smart, who had been charged with causing unnecessary suffering to a protected animal, theft, and assault.
However, she was allowed to plead guilty to criminal damage and was sentenced to an eight-month conditional discharge as well as banned from getting within 10 metres of the restaurant for the next three years.
Smart had previously been arrested in 2022 for trying to enter the same restaurant while Sir David Attenborough had been eating there and deliver him a letter.
At the time she'd called the restaurant 'a symbol of excess and inequality in today's world', saying in a statement that Weymouth had some of the lowest average wages in the UK 'yet this restaurant still continues business as usual amongst the worst cost of living crisis many will ever experience'.
Joe Harker