A 13-year-old boy has stumbled upon a rare Lego octopus, considered a “holy grail” find, that had been lost at sea since the 1990s. This octopus is part of a collection of nearly 5 million Lego pieces that fell into the ocean in 1997 when a storm struck a cargo ship 20 miles off Land’s End, Cornwall. Among the lost items were 352,000 pairs of flippers, 97,500 scuba tanks, and 92,400 swords, but the octopuses are particularly prized as only 4,200 were aboard.
Liutauras Cemolonskas, the Cornish teenager, has amassed 789 pieces of this collection over the past two years, along with several fossils. He made the octopus discovery while beachcombing in Marazion during one of his regular trips with his parents. His father, Vytautas, 36, told the PA Media news agency, “We’ve been looking for that octopus for two years, it’s not easy to find. We were not expecting to find it at all because it’s very rare.”
Having passed on his childhood interest in archaeology to his son, the family frequently undertakes beachcombing trips. Liutauras expressed his happiness at finding the rare octopus and shared that his next goal was to locate one of the 33,941 dragons that went missing after the incident, which saw 62 containers fall off the ship.
Tracey Williams, a beachcomber, leads the Lego Lost at Sea project, which has spent years searching for the plastic pieces. She revealed that a second Lego octopus was found two days after Liutauras’s discovery in Porthleven. Williams explained, “I think that’s because we had a very high spring tide coupled with strong onshore winds, and when the two collide, the waves eat into the dunes and then release a lot of the plastic that has washed up. I think there’s something quite magical about the octopuses. They’re often seen as the holy grail of finds from that shipping container.” Reflecting on her own experience, she added, “I found one octopus back in 1997, and I didn’t find another for 18 years.”