Rare Lego Octopus Found on British Beach After 2-Year Search

“We’ve been looking for that octopus for two years. It’s not easy to find,” Vytautas Cemolonskas, father of thirteen-year-old Liutauras, told the news agency. PA about finding his son. “We didn’t expect to find it because it’s very rare.” The Lego octopus found by Liutauras Cemolonskas on the beach of Marazion, a coastal town in the British county of Cornwall, is known among beachgoers as a “holy grail”.

It, like 4,199 other octopuses, was part of the cargo of the Tokyo Express. That ship had sailed to the Netherlands in February 1997 with the destination of New York. A huge wave crashed into the ship off the coast of Cornwall, knocking 62 vessels overboard. One was filled with around five million Lego blocks, all on a ‘sea’ theme.

Among other things, there were 352,000 pairs of fins, 97,500 diving tanks, 92,400 swords, 28,700 life jackets, 52,000 red propellers, 66,300 portoles, 4,200 black octopuses, 33,420 more sea dragons, 33,420 and more dragons up the sea As of September 2023, no sharks have been found, according to the BBC. Beachgoers and collectors owe it to the Lego company to know such accurate statistics about the blocks that have drowned. At the request of a curious mariner, he revealed how many blocks were in the missing container.

Stuck in seaweed

Beachgoers on British beaches have been chasing Lego bricks for years. “Sometimes we’d find a Lego dragon, or – if you were lucky – an octopus,” said beachgoer Tracey Williams in a BBC podcast in 2023 about the phenomenon. Williams heads the ‘Lego lost at sea’ project, who hunts for the missing blocks. She says she found one octopus in 1997, and then an eighteen-year drought. “There’s something magical about octopuses,” Williams said PA. “For many, they are considered the holy grail of the shipwreck finds.”

The octopus is famous for its invisibility. According to ‘Lego lost at sea’ it is almost impossible for them to get out if they get stuck in seaweed. “It’s an unlikely feeling,” Cemolonskas’ father told the group. “Liutauras still can’t believe it.” But just two days later, a few kilometers from where Cemolonskas found it, a new octopus appeared. Justin Goode found a second copy in Porthleven while walking on the beach with a friend’s dog. “Wow,” wrote ‘Lego lost at sea’ on his Instagram page. Liutauras probably won’t care. The 13-year-old already has a new goal: he wants to find one of the remaining dragons. Over the past two years he has already collected 789 Lego blocks.

The blocks have also been an obsession for Williams. “I took them home and put them on the kitchen window. When the pile got too big, we put everything in the garden shed,” Williams said of her block hunt in 2023. She admits that the Lego block story may have life to take over a little. “It started as something fun, but now it’s almost a full-time job. ” Her group monitors, among other things, where the blocks wash up.

In addition to being interesting, the story of Lego is also a source of concern. According to scientists, it could take hundreds or even a thousand years for the plastic Lego blocks still in the water to break down completely.