On 13 February 1997, a rogue wave struck the German-flagged cargo ship Tokio Express about 20 miles (32 km) off Land's End, as it traveled from Rotterdam to New York. The wave caused 62 containers to fall overboard. One of the containers had been shipped from Denmark and contained nearly 5 million Lego pieces, including more than 33,000 black dragons and a few hundred green ones, according to press reports. The container also held pieces from sets like Aquazone or Pirates, along with diving fins, scuba tanks, flowers, and yellow life jackets. The ship's captain described the wave as a rare event, occurring only once every century, according to the BBC, as cited by Live Science. He said the ship tilted 60 degrees on one side and then 40 degrees on the other. In the days that followed, helicopter pilots reported a layer of Lego pieces floating on the surface of the water. Nearly thirty years later, black Lego dragons continue to wash up on the beaches of Cornwall and Devon, especially after storms. A study by the University of Plymouth, published in the journal Environmental Pollution on 29 February 2020, suggests that these Lego pieces could remain in the marine environment for up to 1,300 years. The study, led by Andrew Turner, Rob Arnold, and Tracey Williams, compared 50 pieces collected from southwest England beaches to new pieces preserved since the 1970s and 1980s. The researchers found that the pieces had aged between 100 and 1,300 years, with the upper limit emphasized in the study's title: "Weathering and persistence of plastic in the marine environment: Lessons from LEGO." However, the study notes that the 1,300-year estimate applies to general Lego bricks made of plastic ABS and not specifically to the dragons from the Tokio Express. Other pieces collected could have come from household waste or been lost by visitors. Tracey Williams began collecting Lego pieces in 1997 while beachcombing with her children in Devon. She later launched the LEGO Lost at Sea project to catalog the findings, with the help of divers, oceanographers, and fishermen. Her page became a collective registry of the drift. According to Williams, a green dragon is enough to make a neighbor envious. She noted that in 2014, she knew of only three octopuses found, one of which was by herself, in a cave in Challaborough, in Devon. Not all of the spilled Lego pieces float. Most of the spill would be on the ocean floor, according to Great British Life, and what deposits on the sand mainly corresponds to the light fraction, stirred by storms. Some pieces have traveled far: a piece shaped like a plant was found in 2018 on the beach of St Bees, in Cumbria, and experts estimated it could have traveled up to 62,000 miles. Oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer had predicted that currents would carry pieces towards the Arctic, or even beyond the Pacific. Volunteers from Rame Peninsula Beach Care and LEGO Lost at Sea have already removed thousands of pieces and other plastic waste during regular cleanups over the decade preceding the study. For those who walk these coasts, the gesture is simple: after a storm, look at the tide line, note where the piece was found, photograph it, and send it to the LEGO Lost at Sea project. Tracey Williams checks the tide times every morning and heads to the beach at 5 a.m.