The blue, softball-sized orb he found Wednesday was a departure from the shells, cigarette butts and seaweed he usually sees. He put it in a plastic bag and put that in the refrigerator.
"It was very, very fresh," he said Thursday. "It was still bleeding when I put it in the plastic bag."
He notified a police officer, who gave him the phone number for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. No one could say immediately what species the giant eye came from.
Wildlife officers placed the eyeball on ice. It will be preserved in formalin, a mixture of formaldehyde and water, before being sent for analysis to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute in St. Petersburg, said Carli Segelson, spokeswoman for the wildlife commission.
