Five million Lego pieces were lost during an infamous storm in 1997, with only 4,200 octopus pieces among them - nearly three decades on, a boy's hunt for one has finally paid off.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/11095756

A rare Lego piece that fell into the sea in 1997 has been found by a 13-year-old boy in Cornwall.

Liutauras Cemolonskas had been hoping to find a “holy grail” plastic octopus for two years in his hunt for pieces of Lego that famously fell into the sea in 1997 when a cargo ship encountered a storm.

Among the Lego pieces that fell into the sea were 352,000 pairs of flippers, 97,500 scuba tanks, and 92,400 swords - but octopuses are the most prized objects as only 4,200 were onboard.

Liutauras, who found it on a beach in Marazion, regularly goes down to the local beaches with his parents and has amassed 789 Lego pieces over the course of two years, as well as numerous fossils.

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Beachcomber Tracey Williams is behind the Lego Lost At Sea project, which has spent years finding the plastic pieces since they spilled into the ocean.

She said she found one octopus in 1997 and didn’t recover another one for 18 years.

“I think there’s something quite magical about the octopuses,” she said. “They’re often seen as the holy grail of finds from that shipping container.”