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Multi-coloured Lego bricks are continuing to wash up on Cornish beaches 22 years after a container ship was struck by a freak wave – and some five million pieces were lost overboard.

The Tokio Express was en-route from Rotterdam to New York on February 13, 1997, when a rogue wave struck it 20 miles west of Land’s End, tilting it back and forth so violently that it lost 62 containers.

One lost container held about five million pieces of Lego.

Coincidentally, a large proportion of the Lego pieces were sea-themed. As a result, brightly-coloured cutlasses, octopuses, scubas and flippers have been routinely washing up on Cornish beaches ever since.

The ship’s manifest revealed that 4,756,940 pieces fell into the sea, including 3,178,807 which were light enough to float.

(Image: Twitter / @LegoLostAtSea)

Sadly, the Lego bricks and toys from the Tokio Express, which many have become collector's items, will take hundreds of years to biodegrade and will continue to pollute our seas for decades to come, poisoning fish, seabirds and mammals.

Tracey Williams of Newquay, who started the Lego Lost at Sea Facebook page in 2014, reported that over 1,000 plastic bottles were discovered during an eight-hour beach clean on a Cornish beach recently.

(Image: Twitter / @LegoLostAtSea)

As well as Lego, of course.

“Yes we found Lego," she said, "but here's what else we found during eight hours of picking up plastic from one Cornish cove, all washed up with seaweed from the seabed last week.”

(Image: Twitter / @LegoLostAtSea)

She went on to list what was found, including 1097 bottles/fragments, 158 bits of broken net float, 74 goggles/glasses and 32 shoes.

“And we barely scratched the surface,” she added. “We also found clothes, bits of carpet, fishermen's gloves, toys, a windsock, a boomerang, a vinyl seat cover, curtain hooks, hundreds of strips of car tyre rubber, rope, net, etc - all items that do not float.

“The plastic that floats is just the tip of the iceberg.”

You can shop for Lego here.