Millions of shipwrecked Lego pieces still drifting 25 years after the container disaster

BEACHGOERS in Cornwall, UK regularly find Lego pieces washed ashore – here’s why.

Lego The toy has been around for 25 years on the southwest coast of England after a container ship was hit by waves in 1997.

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The ship, called the Tokio Express, contained dozens of containers on board that were swallowed up by the ocean, including one containing 5 million Lego pieces.

The event has been billed as the “Great Lego Spill” and is considered one of the worst environmental disasters involving toys as even in 2022, the ocean still sprays Lego on the shore.

The spill has been documented by Tracey Williams for years – this month she published her findings in a book titled Adrift: The Curious Tale of the Lego Lost at Sea.

“In 2010, I moved to Cornwall to be closer to my family and on my first trip to the beach I noticed Legos from the spill again,” Williams said. Live Science.

“I’m surprised it’s still being washed away after all this time,” she added.

Williams also took to Instagram (@legolostatsea), where she boasts thousands of followers, to share her Lego quest.

Interestingly, as Williams exhibits in both her book and Instagram, many of the uncovered Lego pieces are meant to be part of marine-themed sets.

Among the rubble lost at sea were 418,000 LEGO flippers, 97,500 diving flasks, 26,600 life preservers, 13,000 spear guns and 4,200 octopuses.

Williams also notes in his book that the Lego spill is capable of traveling amazing distances – even as far as the southern coast of the continental United States.

“A US mariner discovered a black LEGO octopus lying in a thick layer of dry seagrass on Galveston Island, Texas,” she wrote, adding that it could have been caused by an oil spill.

To this day, it’s unclear how many Lego pieces remain in the ocean, but it seems that the lighter pieces are the ones that most often wash up on the shore.

Beachgoers have also discovered some of the heavier Lego pieces, which likely washed away due to the presence of air pockets.

“What we find now are sinking pieces as well as floating pieces,” Williams said.

“It gives us insight into what happens to plastic in the ocean, how far it drifts – both on the ocean’s surface and along the seafloor – and what happens to it when it broken,” she added.

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