Posted on 05/30/2025 1:10:53 PM PDT by MtnClimber
BRADENTON BEACH, Fla. — A tiny bottle with a message inside traveled from Hawaii in ocean currents before being washed ashore in Bradenton Beach on Sunday and found by a girl visiting from Michigan.
“It was in this tiny little glass bottle with cute little origami birds,” said Paris Hoisington, 31. “She was so surprised. Came running right towards me on the beach.”
Hoisington said it’s every kid’s dream to find a message in a bottle at the beach. Her daughter, Josie Law, 11, said at first she thought it was a piece of trash floating in the water.
“Then I saw the note inside,” she said. “I was like, let me grab this. This is cool.”
The note inside the tiny bottle reads: ‘Hello people who found this, you will be happy that you found this. Why? Cause you will know me with this number.’
Hoisington said she texted the phone number and got a response.
“’My brother and I made that when I was younger,’” she said the text read. “’We actually live in Hawaii.’ And I said, ‘You’re kidding.’”
Payton Hollenbeck, 21, said she and her younger brother Elias, tossed that message in a bottle into the ocean at Kaena Point in Oahu 8 years ago. It travelled more than 4,600 miles before reaching the Florida shoreline.
“To think of how many bodies of water it went through,” said Hoisington. “It’s truly amazing what little tiny objects can go places in the world and connect to people from each other side of the world.”
The Michigan mom said the family had already planned to release 3 bottles before returning home and hope to get a response someday.
“We left our phone number on one,” Hoisington said. “We can’t wait to see what happens.”
Hollenbeck said she’s familiar with that cycle because the only reason she threw a message in a bottle into the ocean is because she had previously found one as a kid.
There’s a hundred billion of them.
Big whoop...
><
You are a “Big whoop”.
There was text messaging with flip phones since 1989 (albeit much more difficult to type).
I’m hoping this is true. It’s a cool, positive story for once.
Maybe it went west south of Australia and Africa and then north in the Atlantic. But I don’t know if currents would enable that to happen.
I’m skeptical as well. That’s a new-looking bottle for having been floating around for eight years. Doesn’t look like it would have been easy to seal, either.
The bottle most likely got picked up in the ballast water of a ship in Hawaii and dumped into the water in Florida when the ship put in a port call. Neither the glass nor the paper look like they've been exposed to 8 years of sunlight so it's likely been sitting in the ship's ballast tank the whole time.
From Wikipedia:"Cruise ships, large tankers, and bulk cargo carriers use a tremendous amount of ballast water, which is often taken on in the coastal waters in one region after ships discharge wastewater or unload cargo, and discharged at the next port of call, wherever more cargo is loaded."
“Wes text messaging that common 8 years ago?”
By the year 2000, the average user sent 35 text messages a day. That was 25 years ago.
Texting exploded in 2007 with the advent of the iPhone. That was 18 years ago.
So, yes, old timer, texting was common 8 years ago. Don’t forget to take your pills.
Yeah, sure!
Also, Joe Biden and Knees Haris both have IQs over 160...
Hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore.
The note in the bottle said nothing about texting, just the number.
Being able to keep your phone number through many different phones over the years, the writer of the not may or may not have known about texting at the time of writing the note, and the phone may or may not have been capable of it.
Now it and they are, obviously.
100 billion bottles of beer on the wall,
100 billion bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around,
99,999,999,999 bottles of beer on the wall.
99,999,999,999 bottles of beer on the wall...
To think that it landed in a Gulf Coast beach no less.
What a nice story in the midst of these troublesome days.
I’d be more impressed if the bottle was found on Mt Ararat.
I’m guessing it did go thru the canal...otherwise it would be closer to 14k and longer than 8 years.
Color me skeptical as hell ... Hawaii to Bradenton Beach, FL ... didn’t happen.
No marine growth. Total BS.
Did the note say 86 47?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.