Message in a bottle

The weird news yesterday was that a note placed in a bottle and tossed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2003 made it to the shore of France last month. "One of these days, someone is going to find one of these bottles," Ann Hernandez would say, as she and her boyfriend would send another one out to sea each year on her birthday. They had carried out the ritual each year since 1991, and finally received a reply from a French couple 3,200 miles away - but too late for Hernandez, who had died last November at age 61. The story is bittersweet, but here are some other successes of this tradition:

• In 2004, a 14-year-old Daniel Knopp of Baltimore threw a discarded green wine bottle with a note in it from his family's stateroom balcony while on a cruise to the Bahamas. "I thought it would be unreal if it were ever to be found, but I figured it would be destroyed by the ocean environment." The barnacle-encrusted bottle was found last month by a man walking his dog on a beach in Cornwall, England, who tracked Knopp down via Facebook.
• In 1969, a man threw a Schaefer beer bottle into the water in New Jersey, probably while on a fishing trip. The brief note inside read, "If found, notify the North Haledon Fire Co. No. 2." It was found by a man and his 3-year-old daughter on a beach in Corolla, North Carolina, in 2008 - having travelled only 400 miles in 39 years.
• A bottle containing a pencilled note was tossed into Washington's Spokane River in 1913 by Emmett Presnell (d. 1978) of Rockford was found on the shore 20 miles downriver in April of this year. "Spring and high water brings up various kinds of things on shore. We saw an old flattened basketball and a bunch of bottles. Mostly they were whiskey bottles, Mad Dog 20-20 bottles, things like that. But this one stood out."
• This summer, 6-year-old Maevis Fahey of Medford, Massachusetts, and her 2 siblings put a feather and a note in a large brown plastic bottle and threw it from their ferry while returning from Nantucket. "In over 26 years of sailing I do not know how many bottles I have thrown over the side of the ship but I have never had someone contact me. This proves that it is possible," said the ship's captain who spotted and retrieved the bottle floating in Vineyard Sound the following day.
• In 1985, Donald Wylie threw a bottle containing a note in it into the ocean in Orkney, Scotland, having been encouraged by his mother to throw hundreds of bottles in the sea. "Over the years I've had a few replies, mostly from Norway or Denmark but never one from St. Andrews and never one that's taken this long to wash up." The bottle was unearthed and returned to Wylie by volunteers cleaning up the beach on Scotland's east coast in 2008.
• Melody Kloska and Matt Behrs threw a bottle containing their wedding vows into Lake Michigan after they got married on the beach near the Windy Point Lighthouse in Racine, Wisconsin, in August 2007. Several weeks later, the bottle had travelled 100 miles across the lake and was picked up by another couple who had married on the shore of Pentwater, Michigan, 28 years earlier. Of the toss into the windy lake, Kloska said, "It landed not too far from where he threw it. My thought was that with our luck, it would end up in front of the house next door to the lighthouse."
• When Emily Shih was in the 4th grade in the suburbs of Seattle in 1987, she filled out a form letter, placed it in a bottle, and had it dropped in the Pacific Ocean as part of a class project. In March 2008, it was discovered on a beach of the Bering Sea in Nelson Lagoon, Alaska - 1,735 miles away and 21 years later. After she was contacted, Emily admitted, "I don't remember the project. It was so long ago. Elementary school is kind of foggy."
• In July 2005, Alesha Johnson released a bottle into Morecambe Bay, Lancashire, U.K., as part of a nursery school project. By January 2006, the bottle had travelled 9,000 miles and was found in a boatyard in Perth, Western Australia. "We never dreamed the bottle would go that far, it's amazing," said the head of the nursery school.

Tossing a bottle into the sea in hopes that the note inside will be answered by a distant stranger is a romantic and time-honored idea, but now that I see what many of these stories have in common and being well aware of the "ocean garbage dump," I'm inclined to agree with the author of this letter to the editor.