A giant lobster, saved from the cooking pot by a fishmonger, has died of stress after being exhibited at an aquarium.

Lucky, estimated to be aged around 40, was caught off the Gower Peninsula coastline by a fisherman earlier this week. He was put in the Silent Night Aquarium, in Tenby, instead of the cooking pot but was discovered dead in his new tank. Crowds had gathered at Swansea Market, in south Wales, when Lucky the lobster, who was two feet long and weighed in at 7lbs, appeared on a fish stall.

But fishmonger Christopher Thomas, 20, was so taken with the colossal crustacean he refused to sell and had it transferred to an aquarium instead. Aquarium assistant Mike Batt said: "I could see he was dead the moment he arrived because the water was murky. "To be honest I did not hold out much hope it would survive because it appeared to be ill when it arrived. "We pumped in oxygen to the area around its gills but I think the stress of the last few days was simply too much and it died."