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Pet ‘Lobster’ Dies After Activist Takes It From Restaurant Tank And Throws It Into The Sea

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A restaurant owner says a crayfish taken from his tank and thrown into the harbor likely died on impact.
A restaurant owner says his pet crayfish likely died the moment it was thrown into the sea by an activist who took it from his business. What was described as an attempt to free the animal appears, in his view, to have ended in its death almost at once.Sean Cooper owns Catch at the Old Fish Market in Weymouth. He kept two crayfish in a tank at the restaurant after they were given to him by a fisherman, and he named them Ronnie and Reggie.They were not being kept for food, but as pets and as something visitors could stop and look at while inside the restaurant. Cooper said they had become an unusual and educational point of interest for families, but both animals have now died.

At about 9PM on April 10, 2025, activist Emma Smart entered Catch at the Old Fish Market and declared that she was ‘taking the lobster’ because it ‘needed to be free’. The situation quickly became chaotic once staff realized what she was trying to do.A member of staff tried to stop her, but she took one of the crayfish from the tank and ran from the restaurant. According to The Independent, she then threw the animal into the harbor ‘like a cricket ball’.

 

 

Whatever she believed she was doing for the creature, Cooper said the result was likely the opposite. He explained that the animal, which was actually a crayfish and not a lobster, was taken from warm tank water and thrown into cold sea water, which he said almost certainly killed it right away.

The second crayfish died not long afterward, and Cooper suggested that may have been linked to the loss of its mate. He said he had kept the two animals for years, so losing both in such a short time only made the incident more upsetting.Speaking on BBC Radio Solent’s Dorset Breakfast, Cooper said the crayfish had been his pets for a ‘couple of years’. He also said the difference in water temperature meant the animal 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 wanted ‘the book thrown’ at Smart, who was charged with causing unnecessary suffering to a protected animal, theft, and assault. His reaction made clear that he saw the incident as far more than a disturbance inside a restaurant.For him, it was the pointless death of an animal he had cared for, along with the loss of something he believed had value for local families. He said the crayfish were part of the restaurant’s atmosphere and gave children a chance to see unusual shellfish up close in a way they normally would not.

Emma Smart pleaded guilty to criminal damage after barging into the restaurant and killing the crayfishFinnbarr Webster/Getty Images
However, Smart was later allowed to plead guilty to criminal damage. She was given an eight-month conditional discharge and was also banned from coming within 10 meters of the restaurant for the next three years.Smart had previously been arrested in 2022 after trying to enter the same restaurant while Sir David Attenborough was eating there in order to hand him a letter. That earlier incident meant this was not the first time she had come into conflict with the business.At the time, she described the restaurant as ‘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’.

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