The giant eyeball found on a Florida beach. Credit: The Sun Sentinel

A mystery has been unravelling in recent days after a giant eyeball was discovered on a beach in Florida.

Gino Covacci discovered the item while out for a stroll on Pompano Beach, north of Ft. Lauderdale in the US Sunshine State. At first nobody could work out what kind of creature the eyeball came from, its size prompted a number of people to suggest it belonged to a mysterious deep-sea animal.

Mr Covacci told local paper the Sun Sentinel: “It was very, very fresh. It was still bleeding when I put in it the plastic bag.”

We’d love to say that the discovery led scientists to uncover a freaky new deep-sea creature, but the eyeball has been seen by marine biologists who have now revealed that it probably belonged to a large swordfish. Such fish can grow as large as 1,400 pounds so it is perfectly possible that the eye – which is a little bigger than a baseball – originally belonged to one of these knights of the sea.

Joan Herrera, curator of collections at the FWC’s Fish and Wildlife Research Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla. said in a statement: “Experts on site and remotely have viewed and analysed the eye, and based on its colour, size and structure, along with the presence of bone around it, we believe the eye came from a swordfish.”

She added: “Based on straight-line cuts visible around the eye, we believe it was removed by a fisherman and discarded.”

Genetic tests will now be conducted to find conclusive proof that the eyeball was that of a swordfish. Or not …