Spectacular find: teenager discovers rare Lego figure

Spectacular find: teenager discovers rare Lego figure

A teenager from Cornwall, UK, recently made a remarkable discovery on the beach. For two years, 13-year-old Liutauras Cemolonskas had been searching for Lego pieces from a container ship that fell overboard in 1997. His persistent search was rewarded when he found one of only 4,200 plastic octopuses that were in the container. This discovery caused a stir in the British media.

In addition to the plastic octopus, the boy found almost 800 other Lego pieces, including 352,000 pairs of Lego diving fins and 97,500 Lego oxygen bottles that came from the accident container. Both he and his father were thrilled by the find and talked about their long search for the coveted Lego octopus.

The find was described as the "holy grail of this shipping container" by Tracey Williams, an avid beachgoer known as "beachcombing." Williams, who has written a book about her passion, also runs a social media project called Lego Lost At Sea to raise awareness of ocean plastic pollution. She plans to record reported finds on a map that will be part of a scientific paper on the distribution of plastic from lost containers.

Liutauras Cemolonskas already has his next goal in mind: he wants to find one of the 33,941 Lego dragons that fell into the sea. The teenager's extraordinary discovery joins a series of rare finds made on various beaches, including an unusual fish on the Baltic Sea and an enigmatic stone formation.