View this post on Instagram
Sometimes sunken treasure can look very different from how you’d expect. An English fisherman recently put up for auction a Lego shark that had been on the seafloor for almost 30 years, raising a surprising amount of cash for charity in the process.
The deep-sea bounty came as a result of a cargo ship spill. In 1997, a wave swept 62 shipping containers off the Tokio Express, a German-registered container ship, 20 miles off of Land’s End in England. Inside those containers were 4,756,940 Lego pieces.
In the wake of the accident, pieces have been washing up on Cornish beaches for years. The plastic toys have also been spotted in farther locales, such as the Channel Islands, Ireland, Holland and Denmark.
The piece in question is one of nearly 52,000 lego sharks lost at sea. It was caught by 35-year-old fisherman Richard West 20 miles south of Penzance, in August of last year. According to the auction catalogue for the item, West instantly recognized the item when he saw it in a trawl net, despite the fact that it was covered in tube worms. The piece was the first shark to be reported to the Lego Lost at Sea Project, which was was created to help monitor finds from the ship and better understand how plastic pollution travels in the ocean.
At the end of the auction, the shark ended up going for 430 GBP, or 565 USD.
“I hope that Sharky goes to a loving home, and I’m glad he has raised a bit of money for charity,” said West. He later added, “I’d better get down to Penzance and find a few more.”