Brick Fest Live
(Photo : JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images)
Children search for the right plastic pieces at Brick Fest Live, a showcase of Lego and other brick building systems, in Worcester, Massachusetts.

A British teenager was thrilled to find a rare Lego octopus that disappeared at sea more than 25 years ago and is considered the "holy grail" among nearly 5 million pieces that went into the drink.

Liutauras Cemolonskas, 13, scooped up the eight-armed, black plastic sea creature while walking along abeach in Marazion, Cornwall, with his parents, according to reports.

The little toy is one of nearly 800 Legos, and numerous fossils, that he's found while scouring local beaches.

"We've been looking for that octopus for two years; it's not easy to find," his father, Vytautas Cemolonskas, 36, told Sky News.

"We were not expecting to find it at all because it's very rare."

Liutauras' octopus washed overboard when a wave knocked 62 shipping containers from the deck of the Tokio Express cargo ship into the Celtic Sea about 20 miles from Land's End, Cornwall, during a storm 1997.

One container held a shipment of Legos destined for North America and many of pieces were sea-themed, including 352,000 sets of flippers, 97,500 scuba tanks and 92,400 swords.

But there were just 4,200 octopuses. Local beachcomber Tracey Williams, who runs the online "Lego Lost at Sea" project, reported that she found one in 1997 but didn't find another for 18 years.

"I think there's something quite magical about the octopuses," Williams said. "They're often seen as the holy grail of finds from that shipping container."

In what Williams called a "quite exciting" coincidence, another Lego octopus turned up on a beach in Porthleven, about nine miles away, just two days after Liutauras found his.

"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 that then release a lot of the plastic that has washed up," she said.

 

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