The Cornish beaches where Lego keeps washing up

[klr]

Interesting, but also depressing, given the damage that plastic can do to birds in particular.

A container filled with millions of Lego pieces fell into the sea off Cornwall in 1997. But instead of remaining at the bottom of the ocean, they are still washing up on Cornish beaches today - offering an insight into the mysterious world of oceans and tides.

"Let me see if I can find a cutlass," says Tracey Williams, poking around some large rocks on Perran Sands with a stick.

She doesn't manage that, but does spot a gleaming white, pristine daisy on the beach in Perranporth, Cornwall. The flower looks good for its age, seeing as it is 17 years old.

It is one of 353,264 plastic daisies dropped into the sea on 13 February 1997, when the container ship Tokio Express was hit by a wave described by its captain as a "once in a 100-year phenomenon", tilting the ship 60 degrees one way, then 40 degrees back.

As a result, 62 containers were lost overboard about 20 miles off Land's End - and one of them was filled with nearly 4.8m pieces of Lego, bound for New York.

A quirk of fate meant many of the Lego items were nautical-themed, so locals and tourists alike started finding miniature cutlasses, flippers, spear guns, seagrass and scuba gear as well as the dragons and the daisies.

"There's stories of kids in the late 1990s having buckets of dragons on the beach, selling them," says Tracey, who lives in Newquay.

"These days the holy grail is an octopus or a dragon. I only know of three octopuses being found, and one was by me, in a cave in Challaborough, Devon. It's quite competitive. If you heard that your neighbour had found a green dragon, you'd want to go out and find one yourself."

She says the ship's manifest - a detailed list of everything in the containers - shows a whole range of Lego items, not all sea-themed. After all this time "it's the same old things that keep coming in with the tide", particularly after a bad storm.

No-one knows exactly what happened next, or even what was in the other 61 containers, but shortly after that some of those Lego pieces began washing up in both the north and south coasts of Cornwall. They're still coming in today.
...

More (including the obligatory Lego pictures): http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28367198

[laklak]

Great. Now you can't even go to the beach without stepping on a fucking Lego. BAN THEM!

[Bella Fortuna]

I liked the photos that accompanied the article. But Kevin nailed it, it's kind of a neat thing, but also bad because of its environmental impact.

[JimC]

I think there was an occasion in the Pacific where thongs (flip-flops to the rest of the world) kept washing up on beaches...

[klr]

I think there was an occasion in the Pacific where thongs (flip-flops to the rest of the world) kept washing up on beaches...

Possibly Midway atoll:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midway_Atoll#Pollution

It seems to be especially cursed by pollution.

[laklak]

Why stop with flip-flpos?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salish_Sea ... iscoveries

[klr]

Why stop with flip-flpos?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salish_Sea ... iscoveries

Let the conspiracy theories begin ...