Dragons and Sharks on a Beach Near You: The Story of the Great Lego Spill

On a rainy day in June, a marine biologist named Hayley Hardstaff found a Lego dragon piece on Portwrinkle Beach in Cornwall, England. This wasn’t the first time Hayley had come across Lego pieces on the beach. As a child, she used to collect them, wondering why so many children were losing their toys. But now she knew the story behind these washed-up Legos. In 1997, a cargo ship called the Tokio Express encountered a rogue wave and lost all of its shipping containers, including one carrying nearly five million Lego pieces, including black dragons. This incident, known as the Great Lego Spill, still has people discovering Lego pieces on beaches along the coasts of England, Ireland, Belgium, France, and beyond. Many of these pieces, with nautical themes, serve as a reminder of one of the largest toy-related environmental disasters on record.