A bottle containing a message was dropped into the ocean by high school students in Japan as part of an experiment in 1984. This week, after 37 years, it was found in Hawaii (USA), about 7,000 kilometers away, by a 9-girl She is a year old.
The students wrote the message on the bottle, titled “Investigation of Ocean Currents,” and it was placed on the Kuruship Current near the island of Miyajima in western Japan as part of a school project on the topic.
In the bottle, the sealed letter, dated July 1984, asked whoever found it to take it back to school, called Collegio Chuchi.
The girl who found the item, 9-year-old Abby Graham, was walking with her family on a beach near the town of Hilo, Hawaii, when she discovered it, according to local media. The bottle traveled about 7000 km.
The school said in a press release that it released 450 bottles in 1984 and another 300 in 1985 as part of its research into ocean currents.
So far, 51 have been found and brought back. However, the school added, this is the only bottle found since 2002.
Other bottles from the experiment ended up in Washington state, the United States, Canada, the Philippines and the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific.
Mayumi Kanda, a former student at the school who was a member of the science club in 1984, said she was surprised that the bottle reappeared after so long.
Hearing the news, she said, “rekindled my nostalgia for my high school days.”
Choshi High School said her students intended to write to Abbie to thank her for bringing her back. They said they would include a miniature Tairyo-bata – a type of fisherman’s flag used to indicate a good catch – along with the craft as a gift.
(The text has been translated and modified. Click Here To read the original text in English).
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