One lucky 13-year-old boy has found a rare piece of Lego on a beach in Marazion, Cornwall. Liutauras Cemolonskas had been searching for the plastic octopus for two years before discovering it. The Lego was one of millions lost when the cargo ship Tokio Express was hit by a freak wave off Land’s End in 1997, causing 62 containers to fall overboard.
Liutauras has collected 789 Lego pieces from the 1990s sea spill in total. The cargo of the Tokio Express included 4,200 Lego octopuses, 352,000 pairs of flippers, 97,500 scuba tanks, and 92,400 swords.
Vytautas Cemolonskas, Liutauras’ father, stated that the Lego octopus is “very rare” and “not easy to find”. He told the PA Media agency that although they had not been expecting to find it, they felt “happy” about the discovery.
Now that he has found the rare octopus in its plastic form, Liutauras’ next goal is to find one of the 33,941 dragons that fell into the sea during the incident. Ms Tracy Williams, a participant of the Lego Lost at Sea project, has described the octopus as the “holy grail” of finds. Though she has found one herself in 1997, it took her 18 years to recover another.
Beachcomber Tracey Williams, who is part of the Lego Lost At Sea project, has spent years searching for the plastic pieces since the incident. The project aims to collect and document the many pieces that have washed up all over the world.
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