Message in a bottle

I was gathering seaweed at the shore recently and for the first time ever I found a message in a bottle. It was a poignant note in memory of a lost son (who apparently liked travelling), there were a few items that presumably meant much to the originator : a couple of pencils, a shoelace, a polished pebble £2.70 and some AA batteries. The bottle was a small plastic softdrinks bottle - maybe a water bottle, and had been damaged in the sea and I picked it up thinking it was rubbish. The note also asked the finder to relaunch the note and photo, to continue the journey.



My question is what would be a Permie way of relaunching the note? Is there a way of doing this so that it isn't just another bit of pollution?

Good question. There are so many factors. I'm inclined to suggest you go for a glass bottle, and don't include the batteries as they can leak when they get old.  I wonder if you could also photo copy the note, as the current one is looking as if it won't last much longer.

It doesn't answer your question, but I'd consider adding a second small note saying that the bottle was found and re-launched with a date and location.

As garbage goes, a note in a bottle also qualifies as "human connection" and a "moving headstone" which gives it a value above "pollution".

Jay Angler wrote:Good question. There are so many factors. I'm inclined to suggest you go for a glass bottle, and don't include the batteries as they can leak when they get old.  I wonder if you could also photo copy the note, as the current one is looking as if it won't last much longer.

It doesn't answer your question, but I'd consider adding a second small note saying that the bottle was found and re-launched with a date and location.

As garbage goes, a note in a bottle also qualifies as "human connection" and a "moving headstone" which gives it a value above "pollution".

Yes, this.

Jay has said it more eloquently than I ever could. Please send our respects from the Permies family, and resend the bottle on its way.

Message in a Bottle:  

Glass bottles work well for messages - when I was a kid my dad would launch a few bottles when he was out salmon fishing off the Oregon coast. One of them floated all the way to Guam, and another was picked up by a fisherman in Hawaii. The ones we sent were corked, and sealed with wax.

I would second leaving the batteries out. Maybe print a picture of the original contents and send that instead of any non-biodegradable items?

Cool find, though. Any idea how far it has traveled?

We think the originator lives in Belfast, so it has come over the Irish sea in two years. The batteries have leaked already (the seawater had got in the bottle and they wouldn't have lasted long then).
We hear about things like coconuts being washed up on the shore of the outer Hebrides, having come all the way across the Atlantic. I wonder whether these could be a reasonably long lived container?

This sounds so exciting that you might put the message back in a bottle and it might find its way back to the father or another person who finds it intriguing.

Reminds me of this movie, Message in a Bottle:

Grieving widower Garret Blake builds boats for a living. Theresa Osborne, a lonely divorcee and researcher for the Chicago Tribune, tracks down Garret after finding a message he wrote inside a bottle on a Cape Code beach and profoundly touched her heart.

https://www.warnerbros.com/movies/message-bottle