Giant Eyeball Washes Ashore in Florida
Researchers doubt it's from a squid
Oct. 12, 2012 — -- Staring out at the ocean is a favorite pastime for beachgoers everywhere. But not many folks are accustomed to the ocean staring back.
However, that's just what happened the other day for one Pompano Beach, Fla., man.
Gino Covacci was strolling down the beach on Wednesday and saw something ball-like and went to investigate. When he rolled the object over, he found it was, indeed, a ball—a softball-sized blue eyeball.
"It was nice and clear, it was fresh," Covacci told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
Covacci immediately handed over the specimen to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which planned to preserve the eye and send it to St. Petersburg for analysis.
Covacci believes what he found is the eye of a squid or octopus, but experts examining the eye aren't so sure.
"Because of bone around the eye, we can probably rule out a squid," commission spokesperson Carli Segelson told ABCnews.com. Squid, like octopus, are invertebrates.
So what else has so huge an eye?
"It would be premature to guess," said Segelson. One possibility is that the eye came from a large fish but she declined to speculate further.
"Swordfish is one possibility," said Segelson, "but we can't even say one hundred percent that it's a fish."