Giant eyeball mystery: Giant squid? Swordfish? Max from 'Flight of the Navigator'?

File this under Things that Scare Us About the Ocean.

While on a beachy stroll Wednesday morning (Oct. 10) in Pompano Beach, Florida, Gino Covacci saw a round object at the tide line. Turning it over, he discovered it to be ... a giant eyeball.

"It was very, very fresh. It was still bleeding when I put it in the plastic bag," Covacci tells the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Officers from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission placed the eyeball on ice and preserved it in a formaldehyde mixture, then sent it to their research institute to be analyzed.

What could it be?

Charles Messing, a professor at Nova Southeastern University's Oceanographic Center, says it could be a giant squid, but he thinks the most likely candidate is a swordfish.

You're gonna need a bigger boat to snag that swordfish ... has anybody alerted Peter Benchley?