‘Misguided’ eco-warrior rescues ‘educational lobster’ from restaurant and lobs it in sea

This is the moment a ‘deeply misguided’ eco-warrior ‘frees’ a lobster from certain death without realising it was the owner’s beloved pet.

Emma Smart, who is said to ‘care deeply about animals’, is caught on camera bursting into the Michelin-starred Catch in Weymouth, Dorset.

The harbourside restaurant does serve grilled blue lobster ‘resting in an oil made from its own heads’ but this one on display in a fish tank next to the entrance was never on the menu.

CCTV footage of the rescue-gone-awry shows Smart, in a rainbow jumper,, being tackled by a waitress who tries to push her back outside.

Smart tells her calmly: ‘I’m taking the lobster. It’s an animal, it needs to be free.’

When the worker struggling to hold her back tells her she will call the police, Smart replies: ‘I don’t mind.’

She snatches the lobster, used for educational purposes for more than two years, and charges out with the waitress clinging on to her, crying out for help.

Smart then completes her ‘rescue’ by hurling the crustacean into the harbour on April 10 last year.

It is not known if the lobster survived in the wilds of Weymouth harbour.

Smart, a marine biologist, admitted one count of causing criminal damage to a lobster when she appeared at Bournemouth Crown Court.

She had previously been jailed for four months in November 2021 after an Insulate Britain climate protest and made a scene at Catch before trying to get to Sir David Attenborough.

Ben Thompson, prosecuting, said: ‘At 9pm on April 10 last year the defendant was waiting outside the entrance of the restaurant.

‘When the guests are leaving she comes in and a member of staff attempts to push her out of the property.

‘Eventually Ms Smart makes her way towards the tank that holds the crayfish, which is actually a lobster.

‘It had belonged to the restaurant owner Anthony Cooper for two-and-a-half years and was not for sale but instead for educational reasons when children visit.

‘Ms Smart reached into the fish tank and took the lobster.

‘Multiple members of staff tried to stop her but she left and leaned over a wall before placing it in the harbour, with the lobster not seen again.’

Defending, Kitan Ososami said Ms Smart made an ‘impulsive’ decision to take the lobster after seeing it in the tank.

She said: ‘She acted on impulse. She cares very deeply about animals and marine welfare and this was the driving factor behind her committing this offense.’

Smart, previously of Rodwell Street, Weymouth, but now living in West Wales, was given a conditional discharge lasting for eight months.

The judge also imposed a restraining order for three years banning her from going within 10 meters of the restaurant or approaching staff or guests.

Her Honour Judge Susan Evans said: ‘The lobster was not there for consumption. It was there for educational purposes.

‘You were determined to take it from the tank and you placed it in the harbour.

‘It was a deeply misguided thing to have done.

‘It was not a good thing for the lobster at all and whether or not it survived, we don’t know.’