Many of you may know that song by the Police, and you may have thought about finding a long lost note that had been adrift in a bottle for years in the sea. You may have even tossed one overboard yourself with a note inside, just in case.......... but how many of you have actually FOUND a message in a bottle? Mr. Teagarden has.
When he was about 12 years old, Mr. Teagarden found a drift bottle in the sand of a barrier island off the North Carolina Coast.
Who? What? Where? When? And why?
Mr. Teagarden is an assistant track coach at Durham Academy. My twin sons Carl and Fred are runners and very fortunate to be coached by Mr T. and Mr. Cullen. One afternoon my husband was doing some PolarTREC public relations
Laughing
and Mr T was kind enough to listen --and suddenly ding one of those really cool connections was made that make the world seem like a very small place.
The story:
In thinking about ways to make concrete connections between me up there in the Beaufort Sea and students down here in Durham (and elsewhere), one of the expedition scientists Rick Krishfield from WHOI suggested that I get in touch with Sarah Zimmerman, a scientist with Oceans and Fisheries Canada who has run the Beaufort Gyre Expedition for the past two seasons. She connected me with the IOS Drift Bottle Project.
Drift bottles are a simple and very effective way to study ocean currents; bottles (and other objects) have been thrown overboard for hundreds of years in hopes of understanding how ocean currents flow around the world. From the Drift Bottle web site, I learned that the first recorded case of someone throwing a drift bottle (or at least a sealed cask) was the Greek philosopher Theophrastus, in the year 310BC. He was trying to show that the Mediterranean was created by waters from the Atlantic.
Since then, many, many types of items have been set adrift in hopes of being found later. For example, in the 1950s Guinness Beer dropped 100,000s of bottles in the oceans as a promotional event. Some "drops" have been unintentional....such as shipping containers of Nike shoes and rubber ducks. A retired oceanographer named Curtis Ebbesmeyer uses this ocean flotsam to study ocean currents.
Back to the story: Sarah kindly sent me instructions and inserts so that I could launch my own drift bottles from the ship this summer. I have collected 24 glass (degradable) bottles and dedicated each one to someone or a group: to my students and advisory at Durham Academy, to the families who have helped me prepare for PolarTREC, and to my own family, my biggest fans. On board, I will put a Drift Bottle Project flyer plus personal photos and notes in each one, number and seal them on board the ship, then drop into the Beaufort Sea.
Will mine be found? Where When? By whom? Well only 1 in 25 are recovered (what percent is that?) so chances are slim, but you never know..........
And Mr. Teagarden? Imagine our excitement when we learned that he found a drift bottle! What a great connection! What is even more amazing is where the drift bottle is from! Listen to the audio file below and you can hear him tell about finding this bottle in the sands of what is now Figure Eight Island, a barrier island off the NC coast that is known for its excellent flotsam and jetsam. And let me know if you can make that final connection between his bottle and my expedition!
Gerty Ward says see you soon!