If you visit the far east end of Galveston Island, you’ll often see massive cargo ships making their way toward the Houston Ship Channel. Most of these vessels complete long international journeys without incident - but not every shipping container reaches its final destination. 

 I first learned about shipping-container spills at the 2015 Annual Sea Bean Symposium & Beachcombers’ Festival in Cocoa Beach, Florida. That year’s keynote presentation, “Zen and the Art of Drifting,” explored how objects travel the oceans on long, unpredictable journeys. 

 The symposium highlighted everything from drift seeds and messages in bottles to the surprising items that wash ashore after cargo spills, including the now-famous LEGO pieces lost at sea in 1997. For beachcombers, these accidents are endlessly fascinating because their contents sometimes wash ashore months or even years later. 

 Over time, an astonishing variety of items have turned up around the world: rubber ducks, Nike shoes, motorcycles, coffee cans - even hockey sticks - all traced back to lost cargo. 

 On a bright April day in 2013, I was picking up trash on a Galveston beach, searching for sea beans in a fresh line of sargassum. Plastic always seems to hide among the sea grass. 

 That’s when I spotted a small black octopus toy, about three inches long, its curly tentacles wrapped tightly around the sargassum. I freed it, and instead of dropping it into my trash bag, I slipped it into my pocket to join the growing collection of toys I’ve found along the shore.

 Before attending the 2015 symposium, I was encouraged to bring some of my Texas beach finds to share with Florida beachcombers and attendees from other states. Comparing what washes up on our different coastlines is part of the fun. 

 I brought a mix of sea beans common to Texas, a few shark teeth, and the little octopus toy I’d found tangled in sargassum - my own Texas beachcombing show-and-tell. 

 The cargo spill that drew the most attention at the symposium involved the Tokio Express, which encountered a severe storm near the coast of the United Kingdom on February 13, 1997. Sixty-two shipping containers toppled overboard during the storm. 

 What happens when containers fall into the ocean? Salvage crews try to recover those still floating to prevent collisions with other vessels and, when possible, to retrieve their contents. 

 But many containers sink to the seafloor, where they eventually break open and release their cargo. Others may drift for years before rusting enough to expose what’s inside. 

 This particular spill became famous among beachcombers because thousands of LEGO pieces began washing ashore in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Scotland soon after the accident. 

 Every shipping container carries a Bill of Lading listing its contents, and records showed that one of the lost containers held 4.8 million LEGO pieces - complete with a detailed inventory of each type. 

 Many of them were sea-themed: 352,000 pairs of black, blue, and red Barbie-sized diving flippers, 26,000 bright yellow life jackets, and countless other tiny plastic treasures now drifting through the Atlantic. 

 Many believed that, given enough time, some of the LEGO pieces might eventually drift across the Atlantic and wash up on beaches along the eastern United States. The idea even became a kind of informal challenge for East Coast beachcombers: keep an eye out, verify any finds, and hope to be the first to spot a drifting LEGO piece. 

 But by 2015 - eighteen years after the spill - not a single LEGO piece had been reported in the U.S. Beachcombers began to wonder whether any would ever reach American shores, or if the drifting toys were destined to remain near the beaches of the United Kingdom and northern Europe. 

 I showed the octopus to one of the attendees, and her eyes widened. She urged me to take it to Curtis Ebbesmeyer, the world-famous oceanographer and marine-debris expert featured at the symposium. 

 I had never met him before, and I was excited - and a little nervous - to show him something someone thought might be important. I joined the line of beachcombers waiting with their own curious finds, hoping he could help identify them. 

 When it was my turn, I handed him the octopus and asked if he recognized it. Ebbesmeyer examined it closely, turning it over in his hands. Then, with a huge smile, he asked where I had found it. 

 I told him I’d discovered it in Galveston, Texas, back in 2013. He studied it from every angle, even pulling out a magnifying glass to check for identifying numbers. 

 “I think this is a lost LEGO octopus,” he announced. Word spread quickly, and soon everyone wanted to see the tiny toy that might be one of the 4,200 octopuses lost in the 1997 spill. 

 By the end of the two-day symposium, a panel of judges - including Ebbesmeyer - had authenticated it. It was official: I was the first person in the United States to find a LEGO piece from the Tokio Express cargo spill. 

 The octopus was considered one of the holy grail pieces beachcombers had hoped to find for nearly two decades. I had kept it in my collection for almost two years before learning just how rare and significant it truly was. 

 Since the discovery, a book titled Adrift: The Curious Tale of the Lego Lost at Sea by Tracey Williams has been published, and my LEGO octopus is mentioned on page 41. 

 Not long after the symposium, I was contacted by the BBC and interviewed by a very skeptical English journalist who questioned whether the octopus could truly have drifted all the way to Texas. He even suggested I might be making a fraudulent claim. 

 I assured him I had no interest in deceiving beachcombers or oceanographers - it was simply a toy I had found on the beach. 

 In 2024, nearly three decades after the spill, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reached out, and I did a ten minute live radio interview with a DJ who wanted to learn more about the LEGO that washed up in Texas. And so, the story continues. 

 I hope the LEGO pieces story raises greater awareness about the global problem of plastic pollution in our oceans - not just within the beachcombing community, but among everyone who cares about the health of our coastlines. Beachcombers have been sounding the alarm for years as record amounts of plastic continue to wash ashore. 

 It arrives in every form imaginable, from disposable cups to collectible children’s toys. Finding it on the beach gives us a second chance to pick it up and keep it from harming marine life. 

 And who knows - you might even find something so rare that the BBC calls you.