Strangest Things Found Washed Up On Beaches

You just can’t beat the feeling of on a beach. Sipping margaritas on the sand might seem like paradise, but the terrifying truth is that you never know exactly what’s hiding beneath the waves. Just about anything can turn up on the shore, and here are some of the strangest things people have ever discovered.

Ambergris

A couple in Lancashire, UK, who discovered this rugby-ball sized, greyish rubbery mass in 2016 described its potent smell as something like a cross between a squid and farmyard manure. You might wonder who in their right mind would stop to pick up something so gross, but this disgusting object earned the couple a cool $70,000!

Turns out this smelly rock, weighing 1.57kg, was actually a lump of solidified whale vomit known as ambergris, and you’ll never guess what makes it so valuable. The rare substance is secreted in the bile duct and intestines of sperm whales and is actually used in the perfume industry to make scents last longer. That’s right, you might be spraying whale vomit onto your skin before date night.

In 2019, an even larger lump of this so-called ‘floating gold’ saved a fisherman in Thailand from financial ruin when he found it laying in the sand. 55-year-old Jumrus Thiachot stored the 14lb unknown object in his shed for over a year before experts determined it was the genuine article and offered him an eye-watering $200,000 to take it off his hands.

Beach Buoy Turns Out To Be WW2 Bomb

There’s nothing more wholesome than a family day out at the seaside. In August 2015, one family on the coast of Burry Port in Wales spotted a large, round object in the distance and decided to investigate further.

As they arrived at the scene, the Gravell family were pleasantly surprised to discover a huge buoy covered in colorful gooseneck barnacles which had been washed ashore. It looked pretty ancient, and the kids posed for pictures in front of it and even picked the little critters off the side.

The Gravells returned home and thought nothing more about the strange find, until 5 days later when they got wind of a surprising announcement. The local Pembrey Country Park Officials explained online that the coast guard had discovered an unexploded United States military mine dating back to WW2 on the sands of Burry Port beach, the very same area the Gravels had just been.

Beach officials notified the bomb squad, and the mine was detonated in a controlled explosion at South Wales Burry Port harbor a few days later. Turns out the Gravel’s had a very lucky escape, and they vowed to be more cautious next time they spot something strange on the beach.

Ice Balls

When you think of the beach, probably the last thing on your mind is snow unless you’re from a small town in Siberia, that is. In November 2016, locals in from the Gulf of Ob in Western Siberia were gobsmacked when they arrived at the seaside to find the shore covered in thousands of perfectly-formed ice balls.

The giant snowballs ranged from tennis-ball-sized to some which were some three feet across and 50lb in weight, and word spread fast. People were pictured sitting on them, dogs ran through them and videos emerged online of 11 miles of shoreline covered in the icy objects.

Did some freak giant hailstorm happen overnight? Were these uniformly circular objects a definite sign of alien life on Earth? Unfortunately, not. The ice balls actually turned up over the course of two weeks as a result of a rare environmental process where small pieces of ice form in freezing temperatures and are rolled about by wind and water.

As the balls get jostled around the shallow frozen water, they become larger and more globular until they wind up on shore as if mother nature herself is preparing for an epic snowball fight with god. This unusual find adds a whole new layer to the word “beachballs”.

Purple Blob

Not everything that winds up on the beach can be easily explained, and this next object even left scientists scratching their heads. In July 2017, an unsuspecting beachgoer at Leo Carillo State Park in Malibu spotted something equal parts intriguing and repulsive partly buried in the sand.

They snapped a photo and took to Reddit for answers, assuming that the white-and-purple decaying fleshy blob could only be the discarded organ of some large sea creature. The unidentified lump weighed about 7lbs and measured about 5inches across, and many initially claimed that it was actually a large type of sea-slug called a sea hare, which can weigh up to 30lb.

Greg Rouse, a professor of Marine Biology at the University of California, disagreed because sea hares are soft, but this organism seemed to have a visible rim. Upon closer examination, Rouse decided it was more likely a Pleurobranchaea californica or sidegill; another form of sea-slug which can usually be found in depths between 10-1,200ft. Another contender is the keyhole limpet, which can grow up to 5 inches and have a small shell on the side of their bodies.

Whatever it was, scientists agreed on one thing: it was definitely dead. Those round, purple parts are probably its gut bulging out due to bloating.

Kinder Surprise Eggs Wash Onshore

The ocean isn’t always as unforgiving as we think. In fact, sometimes it can be pretty generous. In 2017, the German Wadden Sea island of Langeoog received an unexpected gift when thousands of colorful plastic kinder surprise eggs washed up on shores. The eggs are thought to have come from a Danish container ship that lost some of its cargo during a particularly nasty storm.

Thousands Of Kinder Eggs Wash Ashore In Germany Following Storm | NBC News by NBC News

As you might imagine, local kids were overjoyed to discover the unexpected arrival and were more than happy to help with the clean-up, as long as they got to keep some for themselves. It’s a good job the shipment didn’t wash up on a U.S. beach though, because Kinder Surprise has been banned here since the 1930s.

Around 10,000 shipping containers are thought to be lost at sea each year, contributing to an alarming amount of plastic waste in the world oceans. In one of the most famous cases, a shipment of 28,000 rubber ducks was lost at sea in 1992 on its way to from Hong Kong to the U.S.

The bright-yellow critters are still turning up today and have been found anywhere from Hawaii to Australia. The so-called “friendly floatees” have actually been pretty handy in helping scientists track the movement of specific currents, so I guess there’s a silver lining to the mass duck exodus.

Megalodon Tooth

The ocean is like one big watery grave containing ancient artefacts which span right back to the dawn of the dinosaurs. In June 2019, Harvey Wall was given an unexpected reminder of just how terrifying the past could be when he happened across a part-exposed tooth on Ocean Isle beach in North Carolina.

After washing it off and examining the object more closely, Wall realized this wasn’t just any old tooth. With a total span of nearly 6inches and a huge black root, this incredible find could only belong to one creature: the megalodon. This truly formidable shark is now thought to have disappeared some 3.6 million years ago, and weighed the equivalent of 10 adult elephants with a maximum span 15ft longer than the average school bus.

Coastal waterways in North Carolina are considered a prime location for megalodon teeth, where they’re often concentrated in riverbeds known as megalodon tooth ledges. Finding one inland like this is a rare event, and although the biggest found in South Carolina spanned 6.7 inches, the predators teeth are thought to have reached a staggering 8inches in length.

Massive Drift Log

Of all the things you might expect to come rolling in on the waves at the seaside, a ginormous tree is probably not one of them. That’s exactly what happened in Washington USA in 2010, though, when unsuspecting beachgoer Philip Lachman came across this monster while taking a stroll along the sand.

The towering tree turned up on the sands of the coastal community of La Push on the morning of April 5th, and it turns out it’s not technically a tree at all: just a really, really big log. This enormous piece of driftwood is officially known as a “drift log” and most likely came from a Western red cedar, Douglas fir or Sitka spruce.

The specimen dwarfed anyone who posed beside it, and although it wasn’t measured officially similar trees in local forests have been known to measure between 5-10ft in diameter and some 200ft in height, that’s one hefty object to be picked up and dumped on the sand.

So just how did this giant drift log surf its way to shore? The simple answer: mother nature. Giant trees just like this one line the mountain slopes of the temperate rain forest that covers the Pacific northwest, and brutal winter storms can spell disaster. When the winds are powerful enough, they can topple the trees and send them down the rivers into the ocean. If the wind doesn’t do it, the rain will; as the rivers flood, they can tear through the forest knocking vulnerable trees down like dominoes.

The Globster

The deep sea is so unexplored that it’s hard to deny the possibility that real-life sea monsters might actually dwell below the waves, especially when one washes up on your local beach.

In May 2018, locals visiting the beach in the Philippine province of Oriental Mindoro could hardly believe their eyes when they saw what lay lifeless in the shallow waters by the shore. About the size of a truck and giving off a smell so pungent it made residents want to puke, a hairy beast later nicknamed "The Globster" had been beached on the sand.

Although it was clearly dead, and probably had been for some time, no one could come up with a logical explanation for the gloopy mass, which closely resembled a giant old English sheep dog. Eventually, fishery law enforcer Vox Krusada was called in to take DNA samples from the rotting corpse, and the results were far less exciting than anticipated.

Krusada confirmed that the enormous beast was actually just the carcass of a 20-foot-long baleen whale which had probably been hit by boat. The hair-like strands that covered its body were likely just decomposed muscle fibers which had transformed the fish’s appearance into some sort of sea-yeti. Isn’t nature a wonderful thing?

Huge Eyeball

One of the most strangely compelling things to wash up on the beach was found in Florida in 2012, it does have a reputation to uphold, after all. A man scouring Pompano Beach probably got the fright of his life when he looked down to see a giant eyeball staring right back up at him.

Resisting the urge to see what would happen if you tried to pop it, the thoughtful citizen kindly handed the specimen to the Fish and Wildlife Commission so that one burning question could be officially answered: who did it belong to? The softball-sized organ seemed fit for a real-life cyclops, so naturally initial guesses were that it probably came from a giant squid or possibly even a whale. Closer examination revealed that there were small bones around the eye, which isn’t the case with squids whose eyes are mostly made from soft tissue.

Speculation raged online, and eventually the FWC came to a surprising conclusion: the eye actually belonged to a swordfish. Who knew they could be so freakishly big? The FWC also added that it was unusual to find an eyeball by itself. Maybe there’s a poor swordfish out there searching for its other eye.

Mysterious Pipes

The British coast might not be so well-accustomed to mysterious sea monsters, but a fair share of unusual objects have still made their way on to shores. One of the strangest discoveries by far was made in August 2017, when a collection of 12 enormous pipe segments suddenly turned up on the Norfolk coast at Winterton and Sea Palling.

Gigantic pipes wash up on Norfolk beaches by On Demand News

At first, how such enormous objects found their way on to the sunny beaches was a total headscratcher? Had they just dropped out of the sky in some freak accident? Each pipe spanned some 8ft in diameter, and the longest beached segment measured a whopping 1,574ft; that’s almost 5 times longer than Big Ben.

It turned out that the pipes had come loose while being tugged to Algeria in north Africa for a large project, and then miraculously floated to the Norfolk coast where they washed up in droves. As locals flocked to witness the bizarre event for themselves, the Maritime and Coastguard agency reassured onlookers that the pipes posed no danger of potential pollution. They were eventually relocated offshore before being towed to Norway, leaving only a bizarre memory in their wake.

Double-Headed Dolphin

Of all the weird and wonderful creatures in the ocean, not to mention the down-right terrifying things that lurk in its deepest depths, dolphins are some of the most well-loved. They’re highly social and intelligent animals who always seem to have a cheeky grin on their faces. But in August 2014, a dolphin that washed ashore in the district of Izmir on Turkey’s west coast put the heebie-jeebies into anyone who laid eyes on it. Why? Well, because it had two heads!

The conjoined corpse was found by shocked gym teacher Turgul Metin who was holidaying in Turkey, and his snaps quickly made waves across the internet. The creature was estimated to be about a year old and measured nearly a meter long with fully-formed eyes on just one of its heads. Thankfully, this wasn’t some escaped experiment from some secret science lab hellbent on creating two-headed monsters. The unusual mammal was simply born that way, and likely died from natural causes.

Although conjoined twins are fairly common in humans as well as plenty of animal groups like reptiles, birds, and amphibians this kind of fetal abnormality is extremely rare in wild mammals. Between 1681 and 2006 there were only 19 recorded cases of two-headed wild mammals, and this Turkish terror is only the fifth known case of dolphin conjoined twins in history.

Because conjoined twins usually die in the womb, exactly how often this condition occurs in dolphins is still unknown, although research biologist Kelli Danill estimates the rate of conjoined twins in marine mammals is less than 1%, making this one super-rare double-headed dolphin!

Dead Starfish

In March 2018, beach-goers from the town of Ramsgate in Kent, U.K. were gobsmacked to discover that their local stretch of sand appeared to have been replaced by a mass-dumping of tiny bones. As they got closer, they realized that the reality was thankfully not so terrifying, but certainly no less strange. It turns out an entire galaxy of starfish had washed up on the sand, where they lay stranded and unmoving as if they’d been suddenly dropped from the heavens above.

Sea Stars normally gather in coastal waters to feed on muscle beds and often find themselves stranded by rough waves, but this beach had suddenly become home to hundreds of thousands of the critters. Researchers from the Marine Conservation Society, a British non-profit organization, attempted to explain the freak happening by noting that shallow seas allow temperatures to drop near or below zero, which leave sea-animals like starfish lethargic and vulnerable to being carried onto shore.

The driving force behind this particular mass-beaching has been described as the combined effect of the huge cold wave dubbed “The Beast from the East” and Storm Emma, which terrorized British coastlines in 2018. The good-natured people who came across the stranded starfish quickly worked together to return as many of the dying creatures to the ocean as possible. Thankfully, experts in the field have also stated that the dramatic incident should actually have little impact on the species overall because they reproduce so rapidly!

Whisky Galore And The SS Politician

Let’s go back in time for a moment to 5th February 1941, when the inhabitants of an island off the coast of Scotland were about to get really, really lucky. That morning, the trade ship SS Politician was heading north past the Outer Hebrides on route to Kingston, Jamaica, and New Orleans when it ran into some rough weather.

After passing the Isle of Man, extreme winds drove the ship off course; and despite efforts to regain control the SS Politician eventually foundered on the unseen sandbanks off Rosinish Point on the Isle of Eriskay. The ship was carrying all manner of goods from cotton to medicines and biscuits, but it’s best remembered for the loot of Hold Number 5: some 264,000 bottles of Scotch whisky.

As the islanders caught wind of the situation unfolding at sea, they excitably headed to the beach where they were met with thousands of bottles of the sweet nectar that had washed ashore. By the time the authorities had declared that the whisky wasn’t ‘fair game’ to take because it was headed to the US, and therefore no duty had been paid on it yet, 24,000 bottles of the stuff had already been swiped in unofficial “salvage operations”.

Eventually, the ship’s hull was dynamited to thwart any further efforts to explore its contents, but the odd bottle still washes up on shore. If you’re ever in the neighborhood, keep your eyes peeled; in 2013, two of these famous whisky bottles were sold for just over $15,000 by Scotch Whisky auctions!

Cigarette Galore Wash Up On UK Beaches

Moving swiftly on from one of man’s greatest vices to another, a two-mile stretch of sand on England’s Chesil Beach was gifted with another bizarre loot in 2014: millions of cigarettes. A 40-foot-long box containing about 11million cigs totaling some 14tonnes washed ashore on Axmouth beach in Devon, while millions of packets littered the British coastline.

The Danish cargo ship Svendborg Maersk had been sailing around the Atlantic coast of Europe in February on its way to Sri Lanka when it was battered by hurricane-force winds which toppled its cargo. The ship started losing its hoard off northern France after it was hit with 30ft waves and 60-knot winds, and in total around 520 containers were lost overboard during the storm.

Thankfully, the shipping company said about 85% of the containers were empty, while the remaining ones contained dry goods, which included cigarette shipments worth some $4million. It might seem like a goldmine for anyone business-savvy enough to bag up the cigs and sell them on for a tidy profit, but before locals could get their thieving mitts on them the authorities announced that they already had a far more useful plan in mind.

Bob Gaiger, a spokesperson for HM Revenue and Customs, explained that the cigarettes would be gathered up and taken to an approved power station, where they would be incinerated in a controlled environment to help produce electricity. Less cancerous cigarettes and more electricity for the national grid? Sounds like win-win!

The Montauk Monster

If you’re a veteran internet user, you’ve probably seen this next image before. The stomach-churning photograph claims to show a genuine sea-monster that supposedly washed up on the shore of Ditch Plains, a popular surfing beach on the Montauk peninsula, back in July 2008.

As the story goes, Jenna Hewitt and her two friends Rachel Goldberg and Courtney Fruin first spotted the beastly carcass at the tail end of New York’s Long Island and quickly snapped a photo before posting it online. Of course, the image of this bloated, dog-like, dinosaur-beaked corpse was like a lit match to gasoline, and speculation soon ran rampant: what was the so-called Montauk Monster, and where did it come from?

Some of the more out-there theories were along the lines of “escaped mutant from a secret science lab” or “inbred Pitbull from the gates of hell”, but no one could agree on exactly what they were looking at. Before anyone could examine it properly, the Montauk monster literally vanished.

According to Hewitt, the carcass had been moved and was now rotting in “some guy's” backyard, but she declined to identify who or where exactly. This convenient vanishing led some to believe the whole thing was just a hoax, while others have since claimed it was actually a racoon corpse that had been robbed of its fur by the tumbling waves. Over a decade later, the so-called monster has become a bona-fide urban legend, but it seems we may never know the truth.

The Maid Of Harlech

The ocean is so vast and mysterious that it seems just about anything can be lost in its depths until the passage of time causes it to be uncovered or washed ashore, that is. A remarkable discovery was made off the coast of Wales when the wreckage of a rare World War II fighter plane emerged from its watery grave after years of hiding.

The United States Army Air Force Lockheed p-38 plane is known as the ‘Maid of Harlech’, and it’s thought to have crashed on the Gwynedd coast in 1942 when its engines suddenly cut out during training exercises. The pilot at the time of the crash, then-24-year-old Second Lt. Robert F. Elliot, was forced to land the plane in two feet of water less than an hour into his journey, after climbing to some 6000ft.

Thankfully, Elliot walked away from the crash unharmed, but went missing and was declared dead just a few months later in North Africa after his plane was shot down. It was thought the Maid of Harlech had been lost forever, but after being buried by 6 inches of sand it appeared like a ghostly mirage when shifting water displaced the beach that usually covers it.

The Maid of Harlech has actually been spotted three times since it crashed into the ocean: first in the 1970s, then in 2007 and most recently in 2014. Although there are no plans to salvage the wreck, it was given protected status in 2019 by the Welsh government after its previously-secret location was revealed online. To this day, it is considered one of the most significant WW2 discoveries made in recent history, and we have the ocean to thank for it!

George Parker-Bidder’s letters

Here’s a little piece of history. In 2015, walkers on the North Sea coast in Germany found a message in a bottle. “Probably a kid having fun nearby or something” is what they thought. When they opened it, the message inside was undated, so they weren’t sure of its age, but they later discovered that this bottle had actually been in the sea for an astonishing 108 years.

It contained instructions to send a postcard to the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth in England. So, that’s what they did. It turns out the bottle was one of 1000 released into the North Sea between 1904 and 1906 by scientist George Parker Bidder, who was investigating tidal currents.

Of course, George wasn’t there to add this result to his research in 2015, and he might have been a bit disappointed to hear it hadn’t even made it out of the North Sea in 108 years. A nice person in Plymouth still went to great lengths to honor the monetary reward promised though. They had to go on Ebay to buy an old English shilling! If you want to find out more about messages found in bottles, we have a whole article about it.

Doritos Washed Ashore

Our seas are full of way more things that just fish. On top of our oceans, there are thousands of ships carrying cargo from one location to another every single day. So, what happens if there’s a crash? Or if some of those cargo containers get dropped into the water? Eventually, things will get washed up onto the shore and this happened after a big storm in 2006. A container full of nothing other than thousands of bags of Doritos washed up on a beach in North Carolina.

What did the locals think? “This is an environmental catastrophe, let’s get down there and help out?” Well, almost. More like, “I love Doritos, let’s get down there and eat some.” Luckily for them, the foil-sealed bags meant that the crisps were still edible. So, they bagged themselves some free bags. You can only wonder if it would have been so easy to get rid of them if they’d been a healthier snack like Ryvita.

World War 2 love letters

Some people’s true love may be potato chips, but this entry is the story of a much greater love than that. One day after the devastating Hurricane Sandy, a 14-year-old boy was walking along a beach in New York. The storm washed several things ashore, including a set of letters, tied together in a pink ribbon.

They were a set of touching World War 2 love letters between a New Jersey woman named Dorothy Fallon and her husband-to-be Lynn Farnham, who was away serving in the Pacific. They chronicle their love story, spending six years apart until 1948, with the last letter beginning: “Darling, two weeks and we will be married.”

Hurricane Sandy LOVE letters by LifePrint 180

The boy set about investigating the couple and managed to track Dorothy Fallon, now, Dorothy Farnham down. The couple were indeed married, although Dorothy was now a widow at the age of 91. Nobody has any idea where the letters had been before the storm or how they came to be released or washed up like that. But Dorothy was overjoyed to be reunited with this story of her past.

Severed Feet

Every now and again, something truly horrifying washes up on the coast on British Colombia in Canada and Washington in the US. Severed human feet. Still in their shoes. The feet of over 14 different people have been found.

Why only feet and not other body parts? Well, it could be a big gangster cull, of course, but, it’s also true that shoes often have buoyancy in them that will allow them to travel through the ocean more easily. So they could be from any natural or unnatural disaster that had several victims, such as a tsunami or a plane crash. A couple of the feet have been identified as actually belonging to locals who had ended their own lives.

Glass Beach

In Fort Bragg in California, there’s a glass beach. For the first half of the twentieth century, nearby beaches were used as a dumping ground for old glass and other big household items. Over time, large amounts of glass has washed up on beaches here. Sounds pretty dangerous, right? But it isn’t. The ocean has worked its magic and smoothed the glass down. It’s full of beautiful colorful glass pebbles.

Ego Leonard: No Real Than You Are

Another cargo ship issue led to hundreds of pieces of Lego being washed up on the beaches in Devon and Cornwall on the South coast of England. But, that doesn’t even come close to the weirdest Lego find ever. Look at this giant Lego figure in the image below.

This guy is eight feet tall and has been found in various places all of the world, from the US, to the UK, to the Netherlands to Japan. His name is Ego Leonard and he wears a T-shirt with the message “No real than you are” on it. What else could be responsible for something as nuts as this, but modern art. Ego Leonard is the pseudonym for a Dutch modern artist. This Lego man is a marketing stunt for his or her exhibitions.

If you were amazed at the strangest things found washed up on beaches, you might want to read about the most unique beaches in the world. Thanks for reading!